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1895 




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R"4" 



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THE 



LORD'S SUPPER 



ITS FORM, MEANING, AND PURPOSE, 
ACCORDING TO THE APOSTLE PAUL 



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copyright, 1895, by 
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THE" LORD'S SUPPER; 

ITS FORM, MEANING AND PURPOSE, ACCORDING TO 
THE APOSTLE PA UL. 



CHAPTER I. 

Paul's definition of ' the body of Christ,' and application of the 
definition to I Cor. x. 16. — Meaning of the word ' koinonia ' 
and ' breaking of bread.' 

So far as our present knowledge extends, the Apostle 
Paul was the first writer who put together in literary- 
composition the words 'GdojuarovXpiGTOv/ * the body, 
or external manifestation, of Christ.' Neither the 
phrase, nor the idea expressed in it, is found in any 
other Apostolic writer of the New Testament. As a 
matter of common-sense, therefore, we must look to 
St. Paul alone for his meaning of the words. Fortu- 
nately for us, he leaves no room for doubt upon this 
point. He specially defines the phrase in every 
Epistle in which it is found ; viz., in the Epistle to 
the Romans, in the First to the Corinthians, in the 
Epistle to the Ephesians, and, lastly, in that to the 
Colossians. And these several definitions are so full 



4 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

and exact, and so thoroughly agree with each other, as 
to leave no room for doubt as to the propriety of its 
uniform application to all other passages in which the 
associated words are found. 

We will take the definitions in their respective 
order. 

In the Epistle to the Romans, the Apostle writes: 
1 Even as we have many members in one body, and 
all the members have not the same office, so we, the 
many, are one body in Christ, and severally members 
one of another ' (xii. 4, 5). 

In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, he expresses 
the same idea several times : ' Know ye not that 
your bodies are members of Christ ? . . . and he that 
is joined to the Lord is one spirit ' (vi. 15, 17). And 
farther on we find almost the same words as we have 
already quoted from the Epistle to the Romans : * For 
as the body is one, and hath many members, and all 
members of the body, being many, are one body ; so 
also is the Christ' (xii. 12). And the Apostle con- 
tinues : ' For in one spirit we were all baptized into 
one body, whether Jew or Greek, whether bond or 
free, and we were all made to drink of one spirit.'* 

And after describing through the next thirteen 
verses the agreement and perfect unity of different 
members of the human body, in their various relation- 
ships to each other as parts of one complete organism, 
he winds up the illustration with this emphatic appli- 
cation to the Corinthian Church : ' Now ye are " a 
soma of Christ " — an external manifestation of the 

* He repeats this in his Epistle to the Galatians, chap. iii. 
26-28. 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 5 

Spirit of Christ — and members of the " soma," each in 
his part,' i.e., according to the service he fulfils 
in it. 

In his Epistle to the Ephesians, certainly one of 
the last, if not the last, of the Apostle's literary 
works, and that which may be regarded as his legacy 
to the Universal Church, this idea of the Church 
being the body of Christ, and individual members of 
the Church members of His body, may be said to 
permeate the whole. This is the central idea of the 
Epistle, round which gather and culminate all the 
hopes, privileges and duties of the Christian disciple. 
But our present object is simply to bring into review 
those passages in which the Apostle defines his own 
peculiar phrase, 'atiy-a rov Xpiffrov, ' body of Christ.' 

Our first quotation is from the first chapter, begin- 
ning with the seventeenth verse : ' The God and Father 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory. . . . when 
He raised the Christ from the dead, made Him sit at 
His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all 
rule, and all authority, and power, and dominion, and 
every name that is named, not only in this world, but 
also in that which is to come ; and He put all things 
in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be 
head over all things to the CHURCH, which is HIS 
BODY, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all' 

The whole of the second and third chapters are 
devoted to a description of the privileges and bless- 
ings involved, and bound up in this Divine relationship 
between the believer and Christ. In the fourth 
chapter he connects all the duties of discipleship 
with this relation, as their common spring. Thus, 



6 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

1 There is one body and one Spirit ' (ver. 4). And he 
goes on to say that all the gifts vouchsafed to the 
different orders of men in the Church, ' whether 
apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors or teachers, 
were all given for the end of the building up of the 
body of the Christ, . . . that the disciple may grow up 
in all things into Him who is the Head, even Christ; 
from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together 
through that which every joint supplieth, according to 
the working in due measure of each several part, 
maketh the increase of the body unto the building up 
of itself in love' (vers. 12, 15, 16). 

In the fifth chapter the Apostle deduces from this 
union of Christ with His Church the relative duties of 
husband and wife, ' because we are members of His 
BODY ' (ver. 30), and adds that the original promise 
connected with marriage, that the two so conjoined 
shall become one flesh (vers. 30-32), has its fulfilment 
in the relation of Christ to the Church. 

In the Epistle to the Colossians, the Apostle 
pursues the same line of thought ; but what he de- 
scribes in the Epistle to the Ephesians as springing 
out of the mystery of the Divine will — ' the reunion 
under one head of all things in the Christ '- — is here 
more directly spoken of as the creation of all things 
in the pre-existent * Son of His love,' as a * new 
creation.' 'In Him were all things created. . . . 
He is before all things, and in Him all things are held 
together, and He who is the beginning, the first-born 
from the dead, is the Head of the BODY, the CHURCH, 
that in all things He might have the pre-eminence ' 
(chap. i. 16-18). 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 7 

Again, in the twenty-fourth verse, the Apostle says : 
: I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on 
my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of the 
Christ in my flesh, on behalf of His BODY, which is 
THE CHURCH, of which I was made a minister.' 

And again in chap. ii. 16, 17, he says: 'Let no man 
judge you in meat, or drink, or in respect of a feast- 
day, or a new moon, or a Sabbath day, which are a 
shadow of things to come ; but the body ' (in contrast 
with the shadow) ' is the body of Christ.' 

And again in the nineteenth verse he warns the 
Colossians against ' not holding fast the Head, from 
whom all the body, being supplied and knit together 
through the joints and bands, increaseth with the in- 
crease of God.' And lastly, in summing up the privi- 
leges of the Christian believer, and speaking of the 
duties arising from his union with Christ, and of the new 
human nature, of which, by virtue of this union, he 
has become a partaker, and through which he has 
become a member of Christ's body, he repeats in sub- 
stance, and almost in form, what he said before to the 
Galatians and Ephesians, that in that body there 
cannot be Jew and Greek, circumcision and uncir- 
cumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman and free- 
man : but Christ is all, and in all ' (chap. iii. 11). 

And here we may notice, before proceeding further, 
as additional evidence that this is the only meaning 
of the phrase ' the body of Christ ' in St. Paul's own 
mind, that, when he speaks of the natural body of 
the Lord before His death, or of His glorified body 
after His resurrection, he speaks of the one with the 
needed qualification, 'the body of His flesh' (Col. i. 22), 



8 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

and of the other as ' the body of His glory ' (Phil, 
iii. 21). 

We have now fully exhibited the meaning which 
St. Paul attaches to his own phrase, i body of Christ,' 
and which we have seen to be always and emphati- 
cally ' the Church ' — that union of men and women 
which more or less is animated by the Spirit of 
Christ; which He uses as His earthly instrument, 
and through which He works for the accomplishment 
of His own divine purpose : the formation and estab- 
lishment of the kingdom of God upon earth— a king- 
dom which is to be the embodiment of the Divine 
nature in humanity ; and in which the will of God 
shall be done as it is done in heaven. 

And this being St. Paul's own definition and mean- 
ing, we can have no safer or better guide to interpret 
all other passages in the Apostle's writings where the 
phrase occurs. And we will proceed now to apply 
this meaning to explain i Cor. x. 16: 'The bread 
which we break, is it not a " koinonia " of the body of 
the Christ ? ' 

To remove, in order, the obstructions which lie in 
our way, we will exchange the phrase, ' the body of 
the Christ,' for St. Paul's own definition of it — 'the 
Church ' ; and the question will then read : ' The 
bread which we break, is it not a " koinonia " of the 
Church ? ' 

It is obvious that the Apostle's question presents 
three ideas to the mind of the reader : 

i. The bread which the Corinthian Church broke; 
which bread was also 

2. A ( koinonia ' of 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 9 

3. The body of Christ, or the Church. 

We have already shown that, according to St. 
Paul's own definition, ' the body of the Christ ' is the 
Church; and on this point we have no occasion to 
add anything more. 

The next word requiring our attention is Koivoovia — 
■ koinonia.' This word, as is well known, is an ab- 
stract noun, from ' koinos,' which means * common to 
a number,' ' possessed or enjoyed,' ' sharing, or shared 
in common ; ' and always signifies or implies ' union ' 
— union or bond of union of a number, for a common 
purpose or object in view. It never signifies division 
or separation, or an individual, as distinguished from 
a general or common participation of anything. 

Such unions may have many efficient causes or 
sources of origin, many ulterior purposes or objects 
of pursuit. 

An analysis of the general idea involved in, or 
expressed by, the word, will show its legitimate uses 
and applications (see Appendix A). Primarily, it 
expresses the idea of a community, partnership, or 
brotherhood, acting in unity or concert. Secondly, 
the object or purpose, or proximate cause of their 
union. Thirdly, the formal instrument, sign, symbol, 
or custom which the society has established or recog- 
nizes for the purpose. 

Or we might say that every ' koinonia,' or com- 
pany, which is always an aggregate of units, has two 
essential factors : one dynamic and one formal. The 
first is the motive or moving power, which binds the 
members together ; and the second is the instrument 
or sign, which is the formal evidence of the first, or 



io THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

of the member's union with it. The ' koinonia,' in 
its fulness and entirety, being the actual union of 
both these factors in operation. 

Thus to illustrate. The British nation is a ' koi- 
nonia.' The pivotal centre, or bond of union, is the 
Queen, round which radiate the two Houses of Par- 
liament. The Queen expresses her will through her 
Ministers. When the Parliament, representing the 
different orders of the people, join her in approval, 
the will so expressed becomes law to all the millions 
of her subjects to whom the measure applies. 

The spiritual bond of union of the State is loyalty 
to its constituted authorities, and obedience to the 
laws which are its expressed will. Its formal bond 
of union is either a birthright, in the case of a native, 
or, in the case of a foreigner who wishes to become a 
subject of the Queen, letters of naturalization. 

An army is a ' koinonia.' The pivotal centre is 
the Commander-in-Chief. The dynamic bond is 
loyalty to his authority, shown in willing submission 
and obedience to his orders. The formal bond is the 
oath taken on entering the service, and the outward 
sign of belonging to the army is wearing the uniform 
of the service. 

To take another familiar instance. Teetotalism 
forms the subject of a large and popular ' koinonia.' 
The members of this body are united for establishing 
a universal custom of fulfilling all the duties of social 
life without the present customary use of intoxicating 
drinks as a common beverage. The formal instru- 
ment, sign, or symbol of membership is the pledge, 
signed or spoken by the novitiate. The ' koinonia ' 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. n 

in its fulness is seen in an assembly of pledged ^mem- 
bers joining together by speech and action to spread 
the principles which bind them together. But the 
spirit of the union is embodied in each of its mem- 
bers. By-and-by a more ' enthusiastic body sprang 
up amongst the teetotalers known as the ' Blue Ribbon 
Army.' This later form of aggressive teetotalism has 
the same pledge for its basis, but took as its more 
conspicuous symbol a piece of blue ribbon, worn 
openly in some part of the member's dress, thus 
making a public declaration, in season and out of 
season, of their common faith, object, and purpose, 
and thus making the ribbon so worn the special sign, 
or outward bond, of their union. 

Every limited-liability company is a'koinonia.' In 
each case the bond of union is the money subscribed 
by each member on entering the company, which goes 
to form a common fund, for the purpose of carrying 
on their business or trade. The formal instrument, 
symbol, or sign of membership is the share certifi- 
cate. 

Freemasonry is a ' koinonia.' It is a society hold- 
ing within itself, and handing down from generation 
to generation, as its bond of union, ancient rites or 
symbols, containing, when rightly understood, a reve- 
lation of God as the Artificer of the universe, the 
unity of the human race, and the consequent brother- 
hood of man. These knowledges, duly cultivated, 
help the growth of the spiritual nature of the Masonic 
brother and the general happiness of mankind. Free- 
masonry has numerous symbols, but its primary 
symbol is an occult sign of brotherhood, by which 



12 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

the Freemason is universally known and recognized 
by his brethren. 

So the Church — the body of Christ — is a ' koinonia.' 
Its object is to spread abroad over the earth the 
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Saviour of 
the human race, and to unite all men as a free and 
equal brotherhood in the bond of this common faith. 
Its Divine bond of union is the Holy Spirit — the 
Spirit of Christ — animating the individual life of its 
members, which collectively form the body of Christ. 
The outward symbol, or sign of membership in this 
body of Christ, ordained by the Lord Himself, is sit- 
ting at a common table and ' breaking bread together 
in remembrance of Him.' 

Every self-contained community is a ' koinonia.' 
The newly-married couple, by virtue of their marriage, 
become a 'koinonia.' The family, the city, the tribe, 
the nation, are each of them a ' koinonia ' — a union 
of men, or of men and women, for a common object. 

Now, in the light of these illustrations, let us read 
St. Paul's question : ' The bread which we break, is 
it not a bond of the union of the Church ?' To sit at 
the table of the Lord is the outward sign of Christian 
brotherhood and union. This ? breaking of bread 
together ' is the symbol of Church membership — the 
outward sign of belonging to Christ, of being a mem- 
ber of Christ's body ; and individual participation in 
this common ' breaking of bread ' is the outward and 
public recognition of the fact by the Church, which per- 
sonally makes each individual one with the Saviour, 
and, so far, a member of His body, an external mani- 
festation of Him who is his Life and his Salvation. 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 13 

We have now cleared the ground for the full expla- 
nation of the second clause of the Apostle's question, 
and so we will read : ' The bread which we break, is 
it not the symbol of our Christian fellowship and com- 
mon brotherhood, of our being members of the Church, 
and so of our belonging to Christ, and of our oneness 
with Christ our Head ?' 

The first clause of the question still remains for 
consideration. The phrase ' to break bread ' means 
to exercise the rites of hospitality. It is an Eastern 
expression that describes in a figure the functions of 
the head of a family presiding at his family table, 
and distributing to the guests their respective portions 
of the good things provided for them, and their joint 
participation of them.* And the family table as a 
common bond unites the company, for the time 
being, in a 'koinonia.' 

This ' breaking of bread ' requires as its necessary 
constituents three several elements: I. A common 
table round which the company gather; 2. The 
orderly arrangement of the food to be eaten ; 3. The 
joint participation of the food provided. And thus 
the phrase ' to break bread ' signifies to hold a festive 
party, or a social gathering of friends ; just as the more 
modern phrase ' to take tea ' implies or involves all 
the adjuncts named. And thus the meaning of the 
phrase ' to break bread ' is not to be limited to its 

* The Church of Rome acknowledges this in her administration 
of the wafer to her communicants. There is no ' breaking of bread ' 
in the literal sense of the words, in the Romish rite. The priest pre- 
sides at the altar, and ' breaks the bread ' of the Lord's table by giving 
with his own hands to each communicant his share of the food 
provided. 



14 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

apparent literal signification of dividing a loaf into 
pieces, but must be understood in its wider sense as 
including all the particulars mentioned. And the 
emphasis, if any, in St. Paul's question should be laid 
upon the word 'we' — the bread which 'we' break; 
and this has its exact equivalent in the corresponding 
phrase, ' our breaking of bread,' and this is what the 
Apostle means by this clause of his question . ' Is not 
our breaking of bread at the Lord's table a symbol 
ordained by Christ Himself to express and embody 
the brotherhood of the Church and its unity with 
Himself?' a unity which constitutes every individual 
Christian a member of the body of Christ; every 
local Church an organized embodiment of Christ, and 
the Church universal * the fulness of God in Him ' 
(Ephes. i. 23). 

And that this is the meaning of the Apostle may 
be seen from the verse following (1 Cor. x. 17) : ' Even 
as the loaf is one, we, the many (who are in Christ), are 
one body, for we are all joint partakers of the one loaf,' 
and thus members of the Church which is the body of 
Christ. And then he puts this Christian ' breaking of 
bread,' this social union of Christians, considered as the 
expression of the believers' unity in and with Christ, 
into contrast with, and in direct opposition to, social 
unions of Jews and of heathen Gentiles in their respect- 
ive sacrificial feasts. 'Look at Israel after the flesh ; are 
not the eaters of their sacrifices,' kqivgovoi, ' koinonoi,' 
' associates of,' ' united spiritually with ' the altars at 
which their sacrifices have been offered? (ver. 18). 
And so we may thus paraphrase his following words 
(vers. 19-21). And 'whilst not teaching that an idol 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 15 

is anything to a disciple of Christ, more than the 
materials of which it is made ; or that that which is 
offered to an idol is anything more than, or different 
from ordinary food, so long as it is not eaten with a 
conscious reference to the idol — I do say that these 
heathen services carry the worshipper into a spiritual 
communion or common partnership with demons, 
whose power and influence upon earth the Lord Jesus 
came to destroy, and I would not have you enter 
into any such union with demons.' 

' All conscious participation in idol services conjoins 
the worshippers spiritually to the demon which the 
idol represents — in like manner as partaking of the 
Lord's Supper conjoins you to the Lord — and you 
cannot partake of the Lord's table and the table of 
demons.' A man canrtot be a willing servant of the 
demons, who are the enemies of God, and yet be a 
disciple of Christ. You may choose for yourself the 
object and form of your worship and service, but your 
choice and your practice inseparably unite you with 
the spiritual power and influence to which you ally 
yourselves. You may indeed choose which God you 
will serve, the true or the false ; but you cannot serve 
both. 



1 6 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



CHAPTER II. 

Application of Paul's definition to I Cor. xi. 23, 24. — Meaning of 
the word ' body.' — ' This do in remembrance of Me.' 

One other passage remains for consideration — 1 Cor. 
xi. 23, 24 : 'I received from the Lord that which also 
I delivered unto you, how that the Lord Jesus, in the 
night in which He was betrayed, took bread, and 
when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said, 
This is My body, which is for you. This do in 
remembrance of Me ; ' or, ' This do to call Me to 
mind,' for the renewal, or for the revival, of My 
memory to all generations. 

In this passage the Apostle not only gives us the 
form of the Lord's Supper, as the Lord Himself 
ordained it ; but he includes in the narrative, as a 
constituent part of it, the historical facts connected 
with the Institution, all of which he declares ' he re- 
ceived from the Lord.' 

We therefore conclude that the narrative includes 
not only all that the Apostle deemed needful for the 
correction and instruction of the Corinthian Church 
at the time he wrote ; but, by direct inference, all 
that the Divine wisdom saw needful for the Apostle's 
instruction and guidance in the fulfilment of his 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 17 

apostolic commission and duties. And so in the last 
resort it becomes the standard by which the accuracy 
of every other account must be measured, and to 
which they must be submitted for correction, if there 
be any difference between them. 

Before we proceed further to apply St. Paul's 
meaning of the phrase ' the body of Christ,' to the 
interpretation of our Lord's own words, we may 
premise that Mov to etifia, ' the body of Me,' from the 
mouth of the Lord, on this occasion has its exact 
equivalent in the corresponding phrase to ffc^/xa rov 
XpiGTov, ' the body of the Christ,' from the pen of 
St. Paul. 

We have already shown, beyond the possibility of 
rational contradiction or doubt, what St. Paul under- 
stood by the words ' body of Christ ' (see Appendix 
B). The only ' body of Christ ' of which the Apostle 
teaches anything was the Church of Christ, either 
local or universal. Strictly speaking, a local Church 
can only practically exist in its own assembly. 
The formal purpose of its assembly was to break 
bread together for the renewal or revival of the 
memory of the Lord Christ. At the orderly assembly 
of the Church at Corinth there was a real supper 
provided for this purpose. The materials of this 
supper were sufficient to satisfy the wants of hungry 
men, and to enable others to drink to excess. There 
was no priest present in the Church in St. Paul's days 
to administer the elements. So far as appears, the 
Corinthian supper in its arrangements was a transcript 
of the Last Supper of the Lord with His disciples. It 
is in perfect agreement with the account given in chap - 



18 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

ter xiii. of the Fourth Gospel. In the midst of the 
Corinthian supper each member of the Church ' broke 
bread ' with his neighbors at the table, in obedience 
to the injunction of the Lord, ' This do for the purpose 
of renewing My memory amongst yourselves.' And 
this breaking of bread together on the part of each 
one sitting at the table was regarded as a token of, 
and the evidence of their fraternal equality, and of 
their union with each other as disciples of Christ and 
members of His body. 

When our Lord instituted the Supper as His abid- 
ing and perpetual memorial, the word ' church,' in 
its ordinary New Testament meaning, was not known. 
Neither as a fact in the world's history, nor as an 
idea in the disciples' minds, had it any existence. It 
was therefore impossible for our Lord to have used 
it. The words He did speak we have reported to us 
in St. Paul's narrative. Let us endeavor to ascertain, 
if we can, what our Lord meant by His use of the 
word ' soma,' ' body,' on this occasion, and what the 
specific idea was which He intended to convey by 
it. 

St. Paul, certainly — there can be no rational doubt 
on the subject — understood by the phrase ' body of 
Christ ' the Church. So far we are standing on solid 
ground. And, further, by the word ' Church ' he 
understood a community of believers spiritually 
united by their common faith in the Lord Jesus 
Christ as their Saviour ; by their cordial accept- 
ance of Him as their spiritual Head and Exemplar ; 
by their loving obedience to Him as their Divine 
Teacher and Guide ; and objectively or outwardly by 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 19 

their ' breaking bread together in obedience to His 
command.' 

And interpreting the spoken words according to 
the ordinary and universal law of the Greek language 
in relation to the necessary agreement in gender of 
nouns and pronouns, this is the only possible meaning 
of the words spoken. The pronoun rovro, ' this,' is 
neuter; the word apro3, 'bread,' is masculine. The 
words cannot be construed together without a breach 
of universal law in Greek grammar.* There is between 
them an impassable gulf. 

And there is not the least necessity for any such 
forced grammatical construction. The Apostle him- 
self describes the institution under the title ' deipnon ' 
— ' supper.' And in this connection the word ' deip- 
non ' is the exact equivalent of the phrase ' breaking 
of bread.' 

We will, therefore, paraphrase the words of our 
Lord in harmony with St. Paul's doctrine. ' This 
{supper)f is for you, the clothing and symbol of My 

* The word apro} occurs some 99 times in the New Testament. 
In not less than 50 of these it is construed with masculine adjuncts. 
In no case is it found conjoined with a word in the neuter gender. 

f Let it be remembered here that the Apostle teaches, as we have 
already seen, that the ' breaking of bread,' which he designates 'the 
Lord's Supper ' in the twentieth verse, is the ' koinonia ' spoken of in 
chap. x. 16, as the outward bond of the union of the Church. 
Each of the two words, 'deipnon,' 'supper,' and 'koinonia,' 
' bond or symbol of union,' refers to the same fact, and represent the 
same idea, because ' the supper ' was the ' symbol of union ' of every 
local Church. 

Like 'koinonia,' the supper has three elements: (1) The people 
sitting at the table ; (2) the food upon the table ; (3) joint-participation 
of the food provided. And this, in its entirety, forms the Church, or 
the body of Christ,' localized in places. 



20 THE LORDS SUPPER. 

spirit ; — My time manifestation. Let all who shall 
hereafter believe in Me — let all who are animated by 
My spirit, keep — observe — celebrate this supper, for 
the renewal of My memory — for the purpose of call- 
ing Me to mind, until I come again. This supper is for 
you, and for all my disciples, the symbol of your 
brotherhood in Me ; and as each one of you makes 
discipleship to Me the rule and purpose of his life, I 
will be with him, spiritually uniting Myself to him as 
a consciously Divine force, delivering him from his 
self-centered life, which is the beginning and power 
of sin in him, and lifting him up to a higher plane of 
existence, in which he shall be conscious of My pres- 
ence with him, and of his own sonship to the Uni- 
versal Father, and of his own brotherhood to universal 
humanity, so that he shall become a representative of 
Me in the world, reflecting the image of My Sonship 
in himself 

To read ' bread ' — ' This bread is My Church' — is 
impossible. The Apostle's word, ' deipnon ' — 

« 

' supper ' — found in the twentieth verse, meets all the 
difficulty. There is no grammatical, nor, indeed, any 
real difficulty, logically or doctrinally, connected with 
this view of the subject. The difficulties all lie on 
the other side. 

And at this supper — this breaking of bread — at our 
Lord's institution of the service, as we have already 
seen — there were the Twelve reclining at table 
with Him ; and so that supper, which was the last act 
of our Lord's life in concert with His disciples, became 
the solemn inauguration of these disciples, as His 
representative body on earth — the body known after- 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 21 

wards as the Church ; as the medium for the deploy 
of His Spirit ; as His human instrument for carrying 
on and carrying out the work which He Himself came 
to accomplish — the gradual formation of his earthly 
kingdom, a kingdom formed of His own human 
brothers, until, in the plentitude of His Divine power, 
He should come again to make an end of sin and bring 
in everlasting righteousness. 

And what diviner idea can we connect with the in- 
stitution of the Supper than that which we find set 
forth in the apostolic narrative ? Compare with it the 
sacramental theories of the Greek, the Latin, and the 
Lutheran Churches. Can any rational being remain 
a moment in doubt as to the question which of these 
doctrines is most worthy of human acceptation ? Or 
which represents, in the highest degree, the Divine 
wisdom and goodness, in thus sending the message of 
the Gospel to the world, and embodying that message 
in mankind ? 

The religion taught by our Lord is pre-eminently 
human, and adapted to the rational nature of man — 
ever appealing to, ever meeting and answering human 
wants, and harmonizing with those intellectual and 
affectional elements in man which are the avenues to 
his divine spiritual life. 

Whilst our Lord lived on earth He Himself could 
from His Divine wisdom naturally, as well as spirit- 
ually, lead and guide His disciples. And now that 
by His ascension to a higher sphere and plane of 
existence He could no longer be with those disciples 
outwardly, whose union with Himself was still as 
needful as ever for the accomplishment of His Divine 



22 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

mission to mankind, He forms them, through the two 
elements of brotherly love and faith in Himself, into 
an organized human brotherhood, spiritually united 
to, and evermore growing into a more perfect unity 
with Himself — as His own body — the flesh and blood 
medium, for the transmission of His Spirit to those 
whom they taught, and who accepted their teachings 
in truth and love ; and He gives the united brother- 
hood a material base in a common family table. 

And this was for their own individual profit and 
growth in grace. The Supper afforded to each one 
the opportunity of increasing personal knowledge of 
the rest and of personal service to each other — the 
fruit, the only fruit possible, of their uniting love, in 
which and through which the Lord could spiritually 
manifest Himself, and so connect Himself with His 
earthly body for the salvation of the world. 

For though ascended into the heavens — nay, 
rather, because of His glorification — He still stands in 
need of a ' soma ' — an earthly medium — as the con- 
necting link, the conduit pipe", the conductor of the 
Divine force in Him, to the human vessels He came to 
save ; to evolve His creative spirit in the souls of men ; 
to create them anew in His Divine image ; as much so 
as when He — the Word become flesh — stood on the 
plains of Galilee, teaching and preparing His disciples 
for the work which they could thus be fitted to 
accomplish. 

Consider the time, the occasion, the people ; and 
it will be seen that no form of outward union at once 
so perfect, so simple, and enduring, as that which the 
Lord Jesus initiated in that solemn night in which He 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 23 

was betrayed, could the highest and profoundest 
human genius have suggested than that of the disciples 
breaking bread together ; and at the same time making 
the institution of the Last Supper His abiding and 
perpetual memorial. 

Let us pause here to consider more particularly the 
meaning of the word ' body.' Body is the outcome 
and evolution of life on the plane of nature. It is 
the natural continent of force. Body is the natural 
clothing and the exponent of spirit, which it thus 
manifests, and so becomes its universal symbol. A 
body is a natural organic form through which spirit 
and faculty deploy and work. No spiritual power 
can work in nature without natural clothing and em- 
bodiment — without a natural instrument or medium 
through which its force or strength is put forth ; and 
that instrument is, for the time being, its body (see 
Appendix B). We cannot conceive of God working 
without such an instrument. His Divine instrument 
for the salvation of the world is the body of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. So long as the Lord Jesus stood upon 
the plane of nature, His flesh and blood, organized in 
His natural body, was the one human instrument 
through which, primarily, the power and love and 
Spirit of God flowed forth to this end. But death 
removed this natural body from this earthly sphere. 
The purpose of His human life — the conversion of 
the world to Himself — was then unfinished, and the 
same kind of instrumentality through a human 
organization was still necessary to carry on the work 
to a successful issue. He had whilst here established 
between His disciples and Himself peculiar relations 



24 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

of body as well as of soul. He entered into their 
natural conditions, as they into His spiritual, and 
these relations were made visible in the exercise of 
their miraculous powers, and subsequently by the 
descent of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. In 
measure they were to be as He Himself was. These 
relations were needful for the prosecution of His 
future work ; for He came to spiritually animate and 
inform the bodies as well as the souls of men. It is 
a delusion to suppose that God can be served and 
worshipped by the spiritual imagination only. The 
body is to be the subject of the Divine law, and in- 
cluded in the service and worship. And the natural 
body, being primarily the bondslave of sin, and thus 
holding within itself elements of repulsion to the 
work of the Saviour, requires a divinely regenerative 
influence to bring its motions into harmony with the 
Divine will. 

The one element in human nature into which the 
risen Saviour can inflow in His Divine spiritual power 
and life, and work through, for the Divine evolution 
of the race He came to save, to elevate into a per- 
manent consciousness of union with God, is brotherly 
love. The universal human custom which represents 
this brotherly love in its broadest natural manifesta- 
tion is ' breaking bread together ' — sitting at the 
same family table and taking food in common. 
Everywhere this exercise of hospitality was and is a 
sacred custom and institution. It involves the recog- 
nition of a common brotherhood and of human 
equality, and is evidence of the existence of mutual 
regard, friendship, and sympathy ; and on and through 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 25 

these natural qualities alone, social union, whether 
natural or Divine, can be built up. 

To some extent the Jews recognized this truth. 
The celebration of the Passover required every Jew, 
to whatever rank of life he belonged, to join in it, on 
terms of brotherhood and equality. At this season 
rich and poor, high and low, master and servant, 
broke bread together. Our Lord laid hold of this 
national custom, enlarging its sphere of operation. It 
was henceforth to bind humanity in a common bond, 
in which there should be neither Jew nor Greek, 
neither bond nor free, but He Himself should be all 
in all. 

Again, in its last analysis, and on the plane of pure 
intellectual thought, as we have already said, ' body ' 
is the universal symbol of spirit. 

A man animated by the faith and spirit of Christ, 
seeking to unite himself, in and through brotherly 
love, with others, for the purpose of doing them good, 
is a symbol of Christ ; and when we have a union of 
such men, each and all animated by this Divine 
principle, and seeking as the end and purpose of 
their lives the welfare and happiness of each other, 
and of all whom they can bring within the sphere 
of their influence, we have the most perfect natural 
manifestation of Christ that can exist on earth.* 

And that this is St. Paul's doctrine of the Lord's 
Supper he offers abundant evidence. In his Epistle 
to the Ephesians, chap. iv. 4-12, he teaches ex- 
pressly that ' there is one body, and one Spirit . . . 

*We shall refer to this again when we come to speak of the symbol- 
ism of the Cup. 



26 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

one Lord . . . one God and Father of all. . . . To 
each one of us was the grace given according to the 
measure of the gift of the Christ. . . . He gave some 
to be apostles ; and some, prophets ; and some, pastors 
and teachers ; for the perfecting of the saints, unto the 
work of service, unto the building up of the body of 
the Christ.' 

And now compare this with what he writes to the 
Corinthians (i, chap. xii. 4-27) : ' There are diversities 
of gifts, but the same Spirit ; there are diversities 
of administrations, but the same Lord ; there are 
diversities of workings, but the same God. For to 
one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom ; 
and to another the word of knowledge, according to 
the same Spirit; to another faith, in the same Spirit; 
and to another gifts of healings, in the one Spirit ; 
and to another workings of miracles ; and to another 
prophecy ; and to another discernings of spirits ; to 
another divers kinds of tongues : but all these worketh 
one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally 
even as he wills. For as the body is one, and hath 
many members, and all the members of the body, 
being many, are one body ; so also is the Christ. For 
by one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, 
whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free ; and 
were all made to drink of one Spirit. For the body 
is not one member, but many. , . . God hath set the 
members each one of them in the body, as it hath 
pleased Him. . . . There are many members, but 
one body . . . that the members should have the same 
care one of another. And whether one member 
suffereth, all the members suffer with it ; or one 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 27 

member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it/ 
And the Apostle thus sums up the whole : ' Now 
ye ' — in your organized union as a Church — ' are 
"GGopia" ' — not ' to aw/ia,' for that phrase is signi- 
ficant of the Church universal ; but ' soma,' a body, 
or, better, ' an embodiment, an external manifesta- 
tion of Christ ' — an organization for Christ to 
work through and inspire and control — to make 
use of as His own body, ' and severally members 
thereof.' 

But the actual words spoken by our Lord are 
peculiar, and scarcely admit of a literal, and at the 
same time of a full and adequate translation : 

TOVtO 7T01SITS £l5 TtfV ijJLrjV 0LV0LfAVr)6lV . 

We think that the meaning of these words is 
imperfectly represented by the common formula, ' This 
do in remembrance of me ; ' but not to distract our 
reader's attention from the more important question 
as to the true meaning of the phrase, 'body of Christ,' 
we will leave the further consideration of this to 
another occasion. 

It must not be forgotten, however, that the words, 
' eis ten emen anamnesin,' grammatically and logically 
imply that ' /may call you again to mind,' as well as 
that 'you may call Me again to mind.' The relation 
of the Church to the Lord is quite as needful as the 
relation of the Lord to the Church for the work He 
had, and has yet, to accomplish. 

The Church is the Divine instrument without which 
the Master cannot work. Without His body on the 
plains of Galilee the Lord Jesus — the Word become 



28 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

flesh — could not have instructed His disciples or led 
men to Himself. The Church as His present body 
on earth is similarly required. His Divine command, 
* Love one another, as I haveloved you,' involves the 
one condition of all true and effectual service. His 
Spirit cannot enter into the heart where love is 
absent. And love is service. The Divine fire of the 
Spirit enters into the love, and passes with it through 
service from heart to heart. It is only through such 
love that we can become His disciples, and so become 
His helpful servants to lift up men to Himself. 
Without such love in His disciples' hearts, He is 
Himself powerless to effect that radical change in 
individual human nature and society, that is to trans- 
form this world, and those who dwell upon it, into the 
kingdom of God. And on the part of the disciples, 
considered as members of the Lord's body, the Lord's 
Supper is the first and least social expression — the 
burgeoning expression — of that love. 

It is from this Supper as a platform that the Gospel 
of God's love to man is to be universally exhibited to 
the human race. No man must draw a dividing line 
between himself and his brother, or come between his 
brother and God, because the love of God extends to 
and embraces all, and the Spirit of Christ unites all in 
one body. It is only as all personal and social walls 
of division and separation are broken down by the 
force of fraternal love that the kingdom of God can 
come, and His will be done on earth as it is done in 
heaven. 

We may see the same idea of the absolute necessity 
of personal unity with Christ — of becoming members 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 29 

of His body — in order to become the subjects of His 
salvation, and one with Him in His Divine work, 
running through the discourse that followed. Take, 
for instance, the Parable of the Vine. We have in it 
the exact idea of the union of the members of Christ 
in His body, but expressed in even simpler language : 
' I am the true Vine, and My Father is the Husband- 
man. Every branch in Me not bearing fruit He 
taketh away, and every branch bearing fruit He 
cleanseth it that it may bring forth more fruit. Now 
ye are clean through the word which I have spoken 
unto you. Abide in Me, and I will abide in you. As 
the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide 
in the vine, so ye cannot bear fruit except ye remain 
in Me. I am the Vine, ye are the branches. . . . apart 
from Me ye can do nothing. If ye abide in Me, and 
My words abide in you, ask what ye will and it shall 
be done to you.' ' Even as the Father loveth Me, so. 
I also have loved you. Abide in My love. If ye 
keep My commandments, ye shall abide ' (live > 
breathe, and work) ' in My love, as I have kept My 
Father's commandments, and abide ' (live, breathe, and 
work) ' in His love ' (John xv. 1-10). 

We can do nothing without the indwelling, inspir- 
ing, and informing Christ ; and we can only become 
vehicles for the Divine Spirit as we give ourselves out 
in loving service to our fellow-men. The man who 
seeks to save his own soul without laboring for the 
good of others as the Divine medium for its attain- 
ment is wasting his energies in mere Sisyphian 
labors that can end in nothing but disappointment 
and loss. Christ can only work in a man as the man 



30 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

himself permits the Lord to work through him for the 
good of others. The sap of the Divine life must flow 
through every branch and twig of the tree to bring 
forth fruit, or the branch is useless, becomes withered, 
and dies. This is the great lesson that we all have to 
learn before we can be admitted into the joy of our 
Lord. 

But our Lord teaches the same truth directly as 
well as parabolically. ' Neither for these only do I 
pray, but for them also that believe on Me through 
their word ; that they all may be one ; even as Thou, 
Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may 
be in us. . . . and the glory that Thou hast given Me 
I have given unto them, that they may be one, even as 
we are one ; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may 
be perfected into one ; that the world may know that 
Thou didst send Me, and lovedst them, even as Thou 
lovedst Me ' (John xvii. 20-23). 

The purpose of God in Christ is here taught to be 
the unification of the human race in the Divine love, 
and in the Divine nature. As the writer of the Second 
Epistle of Peter says : ' He hath granted unto us His 
precious and exceeding great promises, that through 
these ye may become partakers of the Divine nature ' 
{chap. i. 4). We are to become incarnations of God 
by becoming members of the body of Christ by 
spiritual and personal union with Him. 

The first step towards the attainment of this end is 
a true faith in, and a practical acknowledgment of, 
the brotherhood of man. This, so far as the lesson 
can be taught by an outward institution, is provided 
for in the Lord's Supper, by the disciples being re- 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 31 

quired fraternally and equally to break bread together 
at the same table, and so, in this first step of the Chris- 
tain life, the Lord's command is definite and unquali- 
fied. ' This do : take food together at a common 
table, over which united solemn prayer and thanks- 
giving to God, for His common mercies vouchsafed to 
all, shall be offered by all who assemble together, in 
acknowledgment of their common brotherhood in Me. 
And this brotherly union of My disciples shall be My 
perpetual memorial.' 



32 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



CHAPTER III. 

A critical examination of i Cor. xi. 17-34. 

A CRITICAL examination of the entire passage, 
1 Cor. xi. 17-34, will, we think, confirm this conclusion. 

We will first bring into juxtaposition the several 
verses directly referring to the subject. 

Verse 17: 'I cannot praise you, that ye come 
together not for blessing, but for judgment. 

Verse 18 : ' For I hear that, when ye come together 
in Church assembly, your factious divisions .... 

Verse 20 : ' Render it impossible for you to eat the 
Lord's Supper, 

Verse 21 : " And that every one of you turns the 
occasion into an opportunity of eating his own supper 
without regard to the rest ; and one eats with a gross 
appetite, and another drinks to excess. 

Verse 22 : ' What ! Have ye not homes at which 
ye can eat and drink ? Or is it that ye despise as- 
semblies of the people of God, and put out of counte- 
nance those who have not ? What shall I say to you ? 
Praise you ? Not for this. 

Verse 23 : ' For that which I taught you, and left 
with you to observe and keep, I received from the 
Lord, how that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 33 

He was betrayed, took a loaf, and on giving thanks, 
brake it and said, This is My body, which is for you ; 
this do in remembrance of Me.' 

It will be seen that the Apostle makes two charges 
against the Corinthians: (1) That their factious 
divisions made it impossible for them to eat the 
Lord's Supper, though this was the real object of 
their assembling together ; and this because the 
Supper was essentially a spiritual feast of brother- 
hood, concord, and unity. And (2) that under the 
influence of these same factious feelings, the sacred 
institution had been desecrated amongst them, into 
acts of mere selfish sensual eating and drinking, 
whereby some ate to excess, and others drank to 
excess, alike disgraceful both to the doers and to the 
Church which permitted it. 

The Apostle proceeds to censure this conduct, but 
for remedy of the evil only restates his former instruc- 
tions, viz., that the Lord's Supper was to be observed 
for the purpose of uniting them in one brotherhood, 
and of calling the Lord to mind, by the mutual 
exhibition of His Spirit, and that the true form of it 
was that which he had before taught them : for each 
one of them to sit at a common table, to take bread, 
to give thanks, and break it amongst themselves. 
And that this breaking of bread together in brotherly 
love constituted them the body of Christ, according 
to His gracious promise and purpose. 

Is it not certain, then, from the form and force 
of our Lord's injunction, and of St. Paul's applica- 
tion of it, that it was the duty of each member of the 
Corinthian Church to break bread with his neigh- 



34 THE LORD'S SUPPER, 

bor at the Church table, which was the Lord's table ; 
and to extend to each other, as opportunity offered, 
this acknowledgment of common brotherhood in 
Christ, after the example of the Lord, and in the way 
enjoined by Him ? 

Let it be remembered here, that there was no 
priest present to ' administer the elements ' to those 
seated around the table; St. Paul had no priests in 
the Churches he formed. Each member of the 
Corinthian Church should have sat down at the 
' Lord's table' to take supper with the rest, and ought, 
according to the Apostle's instructions, to have 
followed the example of the Lord, ' who, in the night 
in which He was betrayed, took bread, gave thanks, 
and brake it ' to the company around Him at the 
table. This giving and receiving, and eating of the 
bread so distributed, in company with each other, 
constituted the outward bond of their Christian union. 
And it is clear that if each one present had done so 
— had thus ' broken bread ' according to the Divine 
example and command — no one would have been 
guilty of perverting the Lord's Supper into an act of 
private eating and drinking — of turning the solemn 
occasion into an opportunity of gluttony and excess. 
We have before us in these words of the Apostle the 
double offence and the apostolic correction. 

We have no precise knowledge, as to its special 
details, how the supper was provided or arranged in the 
Corinthian Church ; but we are obliged to suppose 
very different conditions of celebration from those 
which prevail now. And these new conditions involve 
changes for which there is no Scriptural or adequate 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 35 

authority. The Supper, it is clear, was, according to 
the Apostle's instructions, a real one, with materials 
to satisfy both hunger and thirst. It was not a 
1 wafer ' or a corresponding ' piece of best wheaten 
bread.' A priest to administer the elements would 
have had no place there. And that this form con- 
tinued in use in many local Churches is shown by 
' The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,'* in which 
the communicants are instructed to give thanks — fxera 
to i}X7tkr)Gdi)vai — 'after being filled,' chap, x., §1. 

But the Apostle's reproofs, corrections, and instruc- 
tions are chiefly valuable and important to us, because 
they give a clear utterance of his understanding of the 
meaning of the Lord's injunction, ' Do this to call Me 
to mind.' It is quite certain that our Lord's command 
to ' break bread in remembrance of Him ' was 
addressed to each one of the Twelve, and through 
them to every disciple in all ages. And so the 
Apostle taught that all the members of the Corinthian 
Church were ' to break bread ' with each other, which 
could only mean that they were to share a common 
meal on terms of brotherly equality with the other 
members of the Church for the purpose of calling the 
Saviour to mind. 

The Lord's Supper, as St. Paul's words imply, was 
a social fraternal gathering of all the brethren of the 
Corinthian Church ; was a social union of them as 
members of the body of Christ ; was de facto the 
Church itself; that divine human organization, in and 

* This work, composed probably late in the first, or early in the 
second century, knows nothing of 'priests.' There were apostles and 
prophets, teachers and deacons, but the priest is nowhere named. 



36 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

by which the individual Christian character of each 
member was to be built up, and through which the 
Saviour was to work in the city and neighborhood 
of Corinth for the establishment of His kingdom there. 

In short, the Supper, considered as to its human 
factors, was the Lord's time-manifestation to spread 
abroad the glories of His name and power and love. 
Considered as to its Divine idea it was brotherhood 
and service. 

The Supper was intended to be, and might have 
been, all this, but, unfortunately, the factions into which 
the Corinthian Church was divided rendered such a 
consummation impossible. Instead of one united 
people orderly assembling at a fixed time, their want 
of brotherly regard for each other led them to come 
to the Church assembly according to their factions, as 
and when they pleased. Each one ' laid hold of the 
opportunity ' most agreeable to himself, and sat down 
at the table with his own faction, or alone. The place 
of assembly for the time being bore the marks of a 
disorderly eating-house. The Supper of the Lord 
was not eaten. Each member of the Church might, 
indeed, eat a supper, but it was his own supper, not 
the Lord's, and so open to all the excesses which 
followed. 

It seems probable that each member who was able 
took with him a portion of the food required, and so 
far the food was his own; but it was not broken — it 
was not shared with — it was not distributed in love 
amongst the assembled Church. At the best it was 
only shared with persons in whom he had a special 
interest. And in this there was no Church unity, no 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 37 

unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord 
was not spiritually present in the hearts of His people. 

As it was thus evident that the Corinthians had 
neglected, or forgotten his previous instructions, the 
Apostle repeated them \ but clearly he judged this 
repetition in the Lord's name enough for the purpose 
he had in view — the correction of their errors and 
misdeeds. 

The Apostle's teaching, however, certainly implies 
that, to eat the Lord's Supper, it is essential to obey 
the Lord's command. They were all to sit down 
together to a feast of good fellowship and fraternal 
love, and in this way to call their Lord to mind, by 
doing as he did — by breaking bread with each other, 
and amongst themselves at a common table, which, for 
the time being, was the table of the Lord. 

Such breaking of bread was an act of social union 
— a recognition of common brotherhood by all present, 
and a pledge of mutual service ; and as such it was 
the expression and ultimation of an inward spiritual 
life, which in its inmost was the Lord Himself — for 
Christ is the life of the Christian. This social union 
implied and involved, amongst themselves, spiritual 
fraternal union ; and through their common faith in 
their common Lord such fraternal union was purified 
and elevated into a holy spiritual union with the Sav- 
iour — into a Divine ' koinonia ' of themselves and the 
Lord Christ. 

From henceforth this * breaking of bread ' repre- 
sented the most sacred outward union of men and 
women upon earth. By obeying the Lord's command 
His disciples became not merely followers of Him, 



38 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

but so far, ONE with Him — became members of His 
body, in which, and by which, and through which they 
were to become one Spirit, as well as one body with 
the Lord ; and by whose labors in such conjunction 
the world was to be converted to and brought into 
fellowship with Himself; little by little, until His 
Divine Spirit should permeate the human race, and 
' God would be all in all.' 

- And that this is the true meaning of the phrase 
' breaking of bread ' is confirmed by the account given 
in the Acts of the Apostles of the manner of life of 
the first Christians in Jerusalem. It is said of them 
that they ' continued steadfastly in the Apostles ' 
teachings and fellowship, in the " breaking of bread " 
and the prayers . . . and all that believed were to- 
gether and had all things common, and they sold their 
possessions and goods and parted them to all men, 
according as any man had need. And day by day, 
continuing steadfastly with one accord in the temple, 
and " breaking bread " at home, they took their food 
together with gladness and singleness of heart, praising 
God and having favor with all the people ' (Acts ii. 
42, 44-46). 

One other corroborative observation, and we pass 
on. 

The command, ' This do in remembrance of Me,' 
was addressed to all the assembled company at the 
institution of the Supper, without any limitation. 
The Twelve then represented the universal Church. 
The command is addressed to all, and includes every 
disciple of Christ to the end of time ; or as St. Paul 
says, ■ until He come.' It is not possible, having 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 39 

regard to the common meaning of the words, that the 
reception of a wafer from the hands of a priest, or of 
a small piece of bread at the communion rails of the 
National Church, can be the breaking of bread 
enjoined by the Lord. The act in that form is void 
of that social communion and equality which are 
essential elements of the Lord's Supper, and, indeed, 
can scarcely be said to be a breaking of bread at all ; 
for only by a very imperfect figure of speech can such 
an act be said to be performed even by the adminis- 
trant himself. 

Obedience to the Lord's command requires an 
active agent in the work. The value and importance 
of the Supper are found in what it teaches and the 
Divine truth which it expresses ; and not in the physi- 
cal facts of eating and drinking. At the best the 
modern communicant is only a passive agent, witness- 
ing the doing of his own duty by another. There is 
no fulfilment of the Lord's injunction in his share of 
the service. He does not ' break bread ' with the offi- 
ciating priest. But the Church is an inviolable 
brotherhood. Every Christian is a king and priest 
in God's kingdom. And to shut out ninety-nine of 
every hundred of the Church universal — of all the 
people of God — from obeying the Lord's command, 
seems the strangest of all possible methods of render- 
ing obedience, and showing reverence to the Lord 
who gave it, and who said : ' Ye are My friends if ye 
do whatsoever I command you.' 

This history is pregnant with instruction. Observe 
(1) that love to the Lord is the only condition of 
belonging to the Lord's family ; and (2) that the only 



40 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

condition of becoming a member of the Lord's body 
is brotherhood with, and willing service to, the other 
members of the body of Christ. The first and least 
of such uses — the door of entry into the body — being 
a sympathetic acknowledgment of the brotherhood of 
all the Lord's people by a fraternal breaking of bread, 
and ripening into an acceptance of the New Covenant 
of God in Christ by drinking the Cup, The Lord lays 
down no doctrinal test for admission of membership 
into His body, the Church. The Twelve were united 
to Him by loving sympathy alone. Nor did He give 
any authority to the Twelve to impose any doctrinal 
tests or to exclude any who accept Him as their 
Saviour in sincerity and truth. And so it is clear 
that any man or body of men who claim and exercise 
such power to stand between the Lord and His 
people — to ' come before Him ' — to interpose them- 
selves between the Shepherd and His sheep — are by 
the Lord's own judgment ( thieves and robbers' 
(John x. 8). By such assumption the authority of the 
Lord as the Head of the Church is superseded, and 
the man guilty of it separates himself by his dis- 
loyalty from the true vine, and becomes a withered 
branch. There is no rule of admission into the flock 
of Christ other than believing in Him and desire of 
being like Him ; or of being a member of the body 
of Christ, other than the practice of the law of love — 
the heart's recognition of universal brotherhood in 
the Church — which is the supreme rule of life to 
the Christian. He is to be led of the Spirit, and the 
motions of the Spirit of Christ in the heart of the 
disciple are ever to its own growth and to the re- 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 41 

tiewal of the Divine image in the soul ; to close and 
ever closer union with the Divine Saviour, and so to 
love and unity of the brethren ; and to love and self- 
sacrifice for each other. 

Into this love — this embodied element of Himself 
—the Lord continually inflows, as the Spiritual Sun, 
giving life and strength. The deeper the love the 
nearer to Himself. The deeper the love, the higher 
and profounder entrance is obtained into the Lord's 
kingdom. 

This self-sacrificing love is the Divine fruit of the 
life of the Lord Jesus Christ in the soul. It enters 
into the life of the individual and into the life of the 
Church ; into all the relations of believers with their 
fellow-creatures, making human life continually a 
new and ever newer revelation of God, and at the 
same time preparing the true disciple of Christ for 
that higher evolution which is to restore to Him his 
new spiritual body, and so to give him his everlasting 
home with the Lord. 

In the first stage of gathering into His kingdom 
the Lord does not even demand a past moral life — 
nothing but the desire of being conformed to His 
Divine image. He admits a Judas to His table — 
as the Corinthians admitted drunkards — and on the 
same terms as He admitted His own beloved disciple 
John. The Twelve quarrelled among themselves 
immediately after supper (Luke xxii. 24). But all 
this does not affect the Lord's institution of a body 
of imperfect men — for He had no choice in the 
matter — to represent Him and His love to mankind ; 
first amongst themselves in their social life, and then 



42 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

to do, as they were best able, His work in the world 
— to be the living manifestation of Himself to all 
around them. 

The hearts of the selfish were to be won through 
the exhibition of brotherly love, and the conscience 
of each one was to be purified and elevated by the 
pervading conscience of the community. The out- 
ward Church by this process ever becoming a more 
perfect transcript and manifestation of the Lord, and 
the universal conscience becoming more spiritual and 
enlightened, and its influence deepening and pene- 
trating through all depths of individual nature, by 
the power and life of the Lord working from centre 
to circumference in and through the whole, as His 
own body. 

The example of the Lord is the Divine rule for all 
His disciples. The self-renunciation and self-sacrifice 
of the Master is to be the law of the disciple. It is 
in this way only that sinners can be called to the 
higher life. But through the perverted celebration of 
the Lord's Supper in the Churches there is now no 
satisfactory provision for individual growth in the 
Christ-life, or for the conscience of the brotherhood 
enlightening the conscience of its individual members 
— of strengthening the weak, guiding the ignorant 
and restoring the erring. 

In the present state of the Churches the members 
cannot be said to have a common conscience through 
their church- membership ; and when they have, it is 
often a perverted one. The consciences of the most 
spiritual have no sufficient means of reflecting their 
light upon the minds of their brethren, and so it 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 43 

comes to pass that the conscience of a member of a 
Christian Church, except in the small matters of his 
own ' shibboleth,' is little more than the expression of 
a public opinion, which has its beginning in the world, 
and not in Christ. 

Our Lord's method, as shown by the institution of 
the Supper, is heart-union first, and then the true life 
and loyal obedience will grow up with the increase of 
brotherly love. Unverifiable opinions and brain-life 
are measurably left to the individual. The head is 
sure to come right when the heart is won. 

It may be noticed here that the Lord's command 
to break bread with each other at a common table is 
absolute and unconditional. The disciples were to 
become members of Christ's body by obeying this 
command. We shall have to notice, by-and-by, an 
important difference in the form of the injunction with 
regard to drinking the Cup. 

But the Lord's Supper — the ' breaking of bread ' at 
a common table — is only the platform of the Christian 
family and social life. It is only the first step of Chris- 
tian fellowship. It is the door of admission into the 
Lord's family. It is the acknowledgment and open 
profession of universal Christian brotherhood. It is 
simply the promise and vow of service. It is only 
in proportion as this Divine relationship of universal 
Christian brotherhood and service is accepted — em- 
bodied in act and made the rule of life — that there can 
be any spiritual growth in the image of his Saviour in 
the soul of the disciple, or any building up of the 
members of any local church that assemble together 
to call their Saviour to mind, by the exhibition of His 



44 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

Spirit in their midst. And this first outward sign of 
brotherhood is by the Lord's own institution, as we 
have already seen, ' taking food together at a common 
table in obedience to His command.' 

The next — the second step of the Christian life — is 
the voluntary consecration of the individual disciple 
to the service of his Divine Master; the taking upon 
himself His yoke and the bearing His burden — to bind 
himself body and soul to Christ, and in this way to seek 
strength from his only source of strength — the Master 
to whom he has given himself up. 

The sap of Divine grace and love must flow freely 
through the disciple as a branch of the true vine if he 
intends to live for the purpose of spreading life through 
the tree. And this service he voluntarily takes upon 
himself by drinking the Cup. It is only by opening 
himself freely to the inspiration of Divine love, and as 
freely giving himself out in loving service to his breth- 
ren — the brethren of Christ, the members of the body 
of Christ — and in this way accepting the example of 
his Saviour as the rule of his own life, and the Divine 
inflowing of His Holy Spirit as the spiritual fountain 
and motive-power of his own behavior and conduct — 
it is only thus that the disciple can be renewed into 
his Saviour's spiritual image and likeness. 'By this 
shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have 
love one to another.' ■ This I command you, that ye 
love one another as I have loved you. Ye are My 
friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you' (John 
xiii. 34; xv. 14). 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 45 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Cup. — Meaning of 'diatheke.' — The New Covenant. — 1 Cor. x. 16. 
— The Object of the Lord in the Institution of the Supper. — Further 
Considerations of the Lord's Injunction ' This do.' 

We now proceed to consider the second section of 
St. Paul's narrative — that which relates to the institu- 
tion of the Cup — the particulars of which narrative we 
must not forget that the Apostle declares he ' received 
from the Lord.' 

' In like manner also, the cup, after they had supped, 
saying, This cup is the new covenant in My own blood. 
This do in remembrance of Me' (xi. 25). ' In like 
manner* (i. e. t in the same way as He took the bread, 
gave thanks, and gave it to them that were reclining 
at table with Him), so also ' He took the cup,' gave 
thanks over it, and gave it to those present, saying, 
1 This cup is the new covenant in My own blood. 
This do' (or 'Ye do this'), ' as often as ye drink it, in 
remembrance of Me.' 

This is the whole Divine history of the institution 
of the Cup, which our Lord so solemnly emphasizes : 
'This cup is the new covenant in My own blood.' 

We cannot too closely examine into the meaning 



46 THE LORDS SUPPER. 

and application of these words, or too clearly appre- 
hend the ideas which they express. 

What is a covenant? A covenant is an agreement, 
or compact, stating terms by which relations of peace 
or of union are established between contending or 
estranged parties, and through which different and 
even opposite streams of thought and purpose are 
made to coalesce and to flow into one channel. Thus 
as between God and man. How can peaceful and 
harmonious relations be established between a holy 
God and sinful men ? How can the thoughts and 
purposes of God in his supreme holiness be made to 
run in the same channel with the thoughts and pur- 
poses of sinful man ? How can man again become 
the image and representative of his Maker — to be 
ever obedient to the inspirations of Divine love and 
truly reflect the Divine beneficence ? 

This is the problem which the New Covenant in 
Christ solves. 

A human covenant* is an agreement, the terms and 

* We may here notice that 'diatheke' — 'covenant' like 'koinonia,' 
in reference to which it may be described as a ' koinonia ' in embryo — 
has three integral elements in its constitution : i. The contracting par- 
ties ; 2. The terms of agreement ; 3. The symbol of their expression. 

Where there is a written language the third element has its expres- 
sion in a document formally drawn up and signed, sealed and witnessed 
by duly authorized officials, and now named a treaty ; but as nature is 
older than letters or written language, these terms could be witnessed 
and ratified by any sign understood and recognized by both parties. 

Thus when Laban and Jacob made a covenant of peace between 
themselves (Gen. xxi. 44-53), ' Jacob took a stone and set it up for a 
pillar, and Jacob's brethren gathered stones and made a heap of them,' 
as the sign of their joining in the covenant ; and all the contracting 
parties ' ate bread together upon the heap ' — ' consecrated bread ' — for 
Jacob killed and offered a sacrifice in the mountain, and called his 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 47 

conditions of which have been fully considered, and of 
set purpose solemnly entered into, by the contracting 
parties, and so cannot be broken or set aside by either 
of them without a violation of faith, duty and con- 
science. A covenant is, therefore, irrevocable by 
either one of the parties who made it. But when the 
Christian Scriptures were written the word diaOrjurj 
signified not only a covenant as above defined, but 
also a Will, which expresses a similar unchangeable 
relation, but receiving its unchangeable characteristic 
only by the death of the testator, which at once ren- 
dered revocation, or indeed any change, afterwards 
impossible. 

It would seem that this unchangeable characteristic 
of the instrument, rather than its form, led the Jewish 
writers to use the word. There is no word known 
which more emphatically expressed the idea of an un- 
changeable condition, or of an immutable moral rela- 
tion in human affairs. Any expression of the Divine 
will is of necessity unchangeable ; but all God's prom- 
ises of love and mercy to the Jewish people, that were 
associated with an outward sign or symbol, handed 
down to succeeding generations, were regarded as so 
many covenants. The symbol connected the promise 
with all who adopted it. 

Indeed, the connecting symbol marks the technical 
difference between a promise and a covenant. The 

brethren together to eat bread, and in such way settled their differ- 
ences and made a covenant of peace between themselves. 

The stone pillar and the heap of stones were thus constituted a wit- 
ness of the covenant then made, a witness as real to the parties pres- 
ent as the most formal treaty drawn out and written on parchment, 
and signed and sealed after the custom of modern times. 



48 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

most notable covenant symbol of the Old Testament 
was circumcision, which was not only the symbol of 
the Abrahamic covenant, bnt was also the outward 
bond of union, a 'koinonia" of the Jewish people, as 
the Cup of the Lord is of the Christian Church. Cir- 
cumcision brought every Jew into the scope of the 
promise made to Abraham. Drinking the Cup brings 
every Christian within the scope of the promise of sal- 
vation through Christ. The Cup is the symbol of the 
New Covenant, as circumcision was of the Old. If 
this covenant had dated from patriarchal times it 
would probably have been known as the Covenant of 
the Cup, but it had already been described in the pro- 
phetic writings as the New Covenant; and so our Lord 
speaks of it under this title : ' This cup is the new cov- 
enant in My own blood.' 

What, then, is the New Covenant which is symbol- 
ized in the Cup ? 

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, chap, 
viii. 8-1 1, quoting from the Prophet Jeremiah, chap. 
xxxi. 31-34, says: 'Behold the days come, saith the 
Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house 
of Israel, and with the house of Judah : not according 
to the covenant which I made with their fathers in the 
day that I took them by the hand to lead them forth 
out of the land of Egypt ; for they continued not in 
My covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the 
Lord. For this is the covenant which I will make 
with the house of Israel ; after those days, saith the 
Lord, I will put My laws into their minds, and upon 
their hearts also will I write them ; and I will be to 
them a God, and they shall be to Me a people. And 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 49 

they shall not teach every man his fellow-citizen, and 
every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord : for 
they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the 
greatest of them : for I will be merciful to their iniqui- 
ties, and their sins will I remember no more.' 

Now we think there can be no doubt in the mind 
of any Christian reader that the New Covenant spoken 
of by the Lord in connection with the Cup is the same 
New Covenant which was predicted by the Prophet 
Jeremiah as the one which God would make with His 
people in the latter days ; and we see that in that cov- 
enant God promises to His people : 

(1) The creation or evolution of a new and sinless 
nature, both intellectually and affectionally reflecting 
Himself, and consciously to itself revealing Himself 
in it. 

(2) Forgiveness of past sins ; and 

(3) Eternal reconciliation and union with Himself. 
And the Lord embodies this covenant in the Cup : 

1 This cup is the new covenant in My own blood.' 

We must, therefore, never forget that the end of the 
covenant, and of the work of Christ, is to unite God 
to His creature man — to make man the incarnation of 
God — so that His divinity may be objectively and con- 
sciously showtd forth in His creature. 

But no covenant has its fulfillment in its sign or 
expression merely. The peace and amity of nations 
consist in their mutual relations, and not in the written 
treaty. The New Covenant is not in the Cup alone. 
The Cup is only the symbol of the covenant. The 
covenant is, to use the Lord's own words, sv rc5 Ejxcp 
ai'fjLari — ' in My own blood.' 



50 THE LORD'S SUPFER. 

We have therefore to inquire into the Jewish mean- 
ing and use of the word azjua — ' blood.' In the Mo- 
saic Scriptures 'the blood' is declared to be 'the life' 
(Gen. ix. 4; Lev. xvii. 1-14; Deut. xii. 23). 

As the quality of the stream is primarily deter- 
mined by its source, the qualities and characteristics 
of the outflowing life show forth the nature of the 
blood. The essential characteristics of the life are the 
Outcome and expression of the blood. Character de- 
pends upon heredity. The blood of the tiger neces- 
sitates the life of the tiger, as also the blood of the 
domestic animals, the cow and the sheep, determine 
their natural characteristics. 

But the word came to have a very different meaning 
and application. Men came practically to the knowl- 
edge of blood only on its being shed, and then all 
living quality was gone from it. And so the word 
' blood,' which originally signified ' life,' from being so 
commonly associated with ' blood that was shed,' be- 
came the ordinary word to express the fact implied in 
its exposure, of a violent death, or of life wilfully taken 
away. And this is its ordinary signification in the 
sacred Scriptures. 

Thus when the people in public assembly demanded 
that Jesus should be crucified, ' Pilate took water, and 
washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am 
innocent of the blood of this righteous man : see ye to 
it. And all the people answered and said, His blood 
be on us and on our children ' (Matt, xxvii. 24, 25). 
Again, ' If we had been in the days of our fathers, we 
would not have been partners with them in the blood 
of the prophets ' (xxiii. 30). In Acts v. 28, the high 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 51 

priest, in addressing the Apostles, says to them : ' We 
straitly charged you not to speak in this name, and, 
behold, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, 
and intend to bring this man's blood upon us.' 

When used metaphorically, the metaphor derives its 
force from the same idea. Thus Acts xviii. 6, when 
the Jews opposed themselves, and blasphemed, Paul 
shook out his raiment, and said unto them : ' Your 
blood be upon your own heads; I am clean.' And 
again, xx. 26 : 'I am pure from the blood of all men.' 
In Acts xv. 29, the abstention from blood, enjoined 
by the Apostles on the Gentile converts, was absten- 
tion from murderous revenge, and from witnessing the 
gladiatorial games, which were then one of the com- 
mon amusements of the people. In Acts xx. 29, 
where the Church is spoken of as ' purchased by His 
own blood,' though the expression in this passage is 
somewhat peculiar, as probably referring to the Lord's 
own voluntary submission to death, rather than to the 
infliction of it by others ; yet here, as in every place 
in the Pauline writings where he uses the phrase aijxa 
rov Xpiffrov, 'the blood of Christ,' he refers to His 
death upon the Cross. 

There is, however, a peculiarity in the words of our 
Lord here which must not be overlooked, and which 
it is very difficult, if not impossible, to express in an 
English literal translation. The word aijua, ' blood,' 
in association with Jesus Christ, in every case in St. 
Paul's writings, except in the passage before us, and 
in 1 Cor. xi. 27, is construed with a genitive of the 
object, and so forms the phrase, ' the blood of Christ,' 
or ' the blood of His cross,' which, as we have already 



52 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

shown, signifies His death upon the cross. But the 
words here spoken by our Lord, ev rep e/tcp ai)j.ari, 
1 in My own blood,' are, I believe, never used on any 
other occasion. The secondary meaning of ' blood/ 
as implying a violent death, seems to be excluded by 
the use of epios, which is a personal possessive pronoun 
specially referring to, and involving in its direct mean- 
ing, present possession. 

The word with such limitation could scarcely be used 
by our Lord to express the idea of His own death, and 
must therefore be held to include its universal attri- 
butes and characteristics. 

Physiology has not yet developed the law by which 
the psyche, spirit, soul, or life embodies itself on the 
natural plane in blood and flesh ; though it is undoubt- 
edly certain that, in some way or other, such embodi- 
ment is accomplished through the operation of law. 

In this sense the ideas involved in the words 
' Christ's own blood ' can be nothing less than the 
incarnation of Divine life in nature. And the New 
Covenant is in the life blood of the Lord, which is a 
new Divine spiritual element let down into nature for 
its regeneration and Divine transformation. ' Except 
ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His 
blood, ye have no life in you.' And in the degree 
that His Spirit enters into the human race as its in- 
forming, directing and controlling power, human blood 
will become the embodiment of His Spirit, and in such 
blood, the New Covenant in Christ will be visibly 
established on the earth, and salvation wrought out 
in ultimates. 

But this supreme end of Christ's life on earth, the 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 53 

establishment of an organized instrumentality for the 
communication or transmission of His Spirit to men 
for regenerative purposes, can only be realized in 
Divine order by us, as we, in the fulness of the Lord's 
meaning, drink the Cup of the Covenant, i. e., by vol- 
untarily, and with full purpose of heart, taking upon 
ourselves, in the act, the needful conditions of the 
Christ life, first, in intention, purpose, and resolve, and 
then in an outward life and behavior corresponding 
to the motions of the Spirit within. 

' In My own blood,' therefore, as spoken by the 
living Jesus, the words must signify ' In My own life- 
blood' — the blood of His Incarnate Spirit. They 
cannot be limited in meaning to His sacrifice upon 
the cross, though there need be no doubt that that 
sacrifice was the fruit of the life-blood out of which it 
sprang, and so, in a secondary or subsidiary, but still 
most important sense, would be included in it. The 
Covenant-blood contained within itself that element 
of self-sacrifice which led the Lord Jesus to the cross; 
and which thus in Scriptural language purchased for 
the human race the blessings of salvation. 

In perfect harmony with this view, the prophet 
Isaiah (chap. xlii. 6, 7), in a passage that without 
question or doubt refers to the Lord Jesus Christ, 
says : ' I, the Lord, have called Thee in righteousness, 
and will hold thine hand, and will keep Thee and give 
Thee for a covenant of the people ; for a light of the 
Gentiles, to open the blind eyes, to bring out the pris- 
oners from the dungeon, and them that sit in darkness 
out of the prison-house.' In chap. xlix. 8, we have 
the same idea : ' I will preserve Thee and give Thee 



54 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

for a covenant of the people, to raise up the land, to 
make them inherit the desolate heritages.' And a 
similar promise will be found in chap. lix. 20, 21. 

It is a normal scientific fact that is taught in the 
Mosaic Scriptures that blood is the life. Blood is the 
embodiment of the psyche, or natural soul, and the 
blood of Jesus was nothing less than a Divine incar- 
nation on the natural plane ; and so it must, from its 
own Divine 'dunamis,' or inherent power, eventually 
unitize all human life into itself, as well as harmonize 
all lower forms of life with and from its own, and thus 
establish universally the Kingdom of God in nature. 
Except we eat the flesh and drink the blood of the 
Son of man, we have no life in us. Except we con- 
nect ourselves with the Divine source of life and feed 
upon it, our nature must remain in its natural state of 
alienation from God, and incapable of entering into 
His kingdom. 

The Divine power of the Lord Jesus, manifested in 
healing the diseases of all who came to Him in faith 
for such purpose, is simply the same power that He 
puts forth now to lift up the souls of those who come 
to Him in faith for the purpose of being delivered from 
the power and dominion of sin, and so of being in 
holiness of life united to, and made one with, Himself 
in the Kingdom of God. 

We therefore interpret the words, ' the New Cove- 
nant in My own blood,' to mean ' the New Covenant 
in the Word made flesh.' And these words, as spoken 
by the Lord, embrace the idea of His whole life — 
from His conception in the womb of the Virgin, to 
His death upon the cross — -onwards to His resurrec- 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 55 

tion from the dead, and to His glorification in heaven. 
The purpose of the Covenant of God in Christ — a 
phrase which involves His whole nature and person- 
ality and office — is to unite all things in Him, both in 
heaven and earth, that all should confess His universal 
Lordship to the glory of God, the common Father. 

Our Lord declares the Cup to be the Covenant ; 
that is, that in drinking it, it holds the mystery which 
is hidden under it. It unites to the life and so to the 
blood of the Lord. The spiritual truth is shadowed 
forth in the symbol, ' This cup is the new covenant in 
My own blood.' The Cup is thus the bond of union, 
the 'koinonia' of Christ and His disciples. The Cup 
is the covenant in the same sense that a written docu- 
ment may be called a covenant, or a treaty, or an 
agreement, or a bond of union. The written treaty 
and the Cup are each merely signs or symbols. Writ- 
ten words are the symbols of spoken words, as spoken 
words are symbols of ideas and purposes. Ideas and 
purposes in their objective forms are symbols of life. 
Life — Spirit — is the one only truth, substance and 
reality. 

A written treaty or agreement between God and 
man is an impossibility, but the inflowing spirit of 
God into the creaturely spirit of man is the source of 
all Divine human joy and blessedness. This new life 
figures itself out in symbolic ideas ; the ideas again in 
symbolic words, or equally significant signs and em- 
blems ; and of such, the Cup, as symbolic of the expe- 
riences of human life, of varying fortune, or of fixed 
fate, in reference both to man and nations, is common 
to all ancient literature, and is universally recognized. 



56 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

In the prophetic Scriptures of the Old Testament, 
the Cup is generally the symbol or emblem of judg- 
ment* On the other hand, in the Psalms, it is the 
symbol or emblem of salvation. t 

In the New Testament, our Lord several times uses 
the idea of the Cup as symbolic of His own life. 'Are 
ye able to drink the cup that I am drinking ? ' is the 
question he puts to James and John, when, in their 
blind ambition, they ask for the chief places of honor 
in the Kingdom of God (Mark x. 38 ; Matt. xx. 22). 
And on the confident expression of their opinion that 
they were able, He promises them that they shall. 
1 Ye shall indeed drink of My cup.' Poor ignorant 
men, how little they then knew for what they were 
asking, or the immediate meaning of what was prom- 
ised to them ! 

When the cup of sorrow and anguish which the 
Lord Jesus was drinking to the very dregs became 
almost too great to be borne, He cries out, ' O My 
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me' 
(Mark xiv. 36 ; Luke xxii. 42 ; Matt. xxvi. 39). 
And then, as if fresh strength were given Him in 
answer to His prayer, He at once resigns Himself to 
His Father's will : ' If this cup may not pass from 
Me except I drink it, Thy will be done' (Matt. xxvi. 
42). And when Peter, in his hot haste, began to use 
the unhallowed weapon of physical force and destruc- 
tion upon the Lord's enemies, he was met by a re- 
monstrance, dictated by personal resolve, as well as 

* Isa. li. 17, 22 ; Jer: xxv. 15, 17, 23 ; xlix. 12 ; li. 7 ; Ezek. xxiii. 
31, 32, 33 ; Hab. ii. 16. 

f Psa. xi. 6 ; xvi. 5 ; lxxiii. 10 ; lxxv. 8 ; cxvi. 13. 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 57 

by absolute submission to the Father's will, ' The cup 
which My Father has given Me, shall I not drink it ? ' 
(John xviii. 1 1.) 

From this point of view we may see the ground of 
the emphasis in St. Paul's question, 1 Cor. x. 16; 
' The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not our 
" koinonia," our bond of union, " with the blood, or 
with the sacrifice, of Christ?"' 

But the question itself presents an idea which has 
almost grown obsolete in modern Church Christianity. 
A Christian ' koinonia,' or Church, as we have seen, is 
the natural organization, the outmost embodiment of 
spiritual life. Flesh and blood is the ' koinonia' of the 
human race. The form of man is its symbol. But the 
flesh and blood of Christ is the 'koinonia" of a Divine 
humanity, and must be formed anew in us, before we 
can be the subjects of His salvation. That flesh, as 
the organ of His Spirit, ultimates itself in brotherhood 
and service. That blood, in like manner, ultimates it- 
self in self-sacrificing love. And so St. Paul, by this 
description of it, as the ' cup of blessing which we 
bless,' means, Is not the Cup the symbol, the evidence 
to us, of our Saviour's self-sacrificing love, which has 
delivered us from death and hell, and made us par- 
takers of His holiness and glory, but which can only 
be ours as we enter into the spirit of that life, and 
embody it in our own — that life which is symbolized 
in the cup of the Supper, and which by drinking, we 
personally pledge ourselves to illustrate by our own 
example ? 

St. Paul connects all the blessings of the Christian 
Covenant with the blood or death of Christ ; he never 



58 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

seems to tire of the idea. His statement of this doc- 
trine to the Philippians is a good illustration of his 
manner of presenting the subject to his converts. ' Let 
this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus . . . 
who humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, 
yea, the death of the, Cross. Wherefore God highly 
exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is 
above every name ; that in the name of Jesus every 
knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on 
earth, and things under the earth, and that every 
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to 
the glory of God the Father' (Phil. ii. 5, 11). 

It was not for Himself that the Lord Jesus lived and 
died, but for universal humanity, and especially for all 
who accepted Him as their Saviour. And all that 
He realized of glory and power to Himself by His 
life's labors, was primarily for the enrichment of all 
His disciples, that ' they all might be one in Him and 
in the Father' (John xvii. 20-22). 

But the outward symbol of communication was the 
Cup, and the channel of communication was drinking 
the Cup. This to St. Paul was the way, and he knew 
no other way. But it is only as our drinking the Cup 
is the expression of our desire and resolve to become 
one with the Lord Jesus that the act has any true 
meaning or life. Eating the bread, or drinking the 
Cup, without a discernment of our being members of 
the body of Christ, brings judgment and not strength, 
alienation and not union. ' Whoever shall eat the 
bread or drink the Cup of the Lord unworthily, shall 
be held in the body and blood of the Lord for judg- 
ment' (Appendix C). But by drinking the Cup in the 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 59 

Spirit, and according to the Divine ordinance of the 
Lord, we come to Him, as the disease-stricken suppli- 
ants of old, to be healed of our spiritual, as they of 
their natural, infirmities ; resolving in His strength to 
drink His Cup, if it should be the will of God with re- 
gard to ourselves, that we should be joint-partakers 
of His sufferings for the human race, assured that His 
love for His people has not grown less since He as- 
cended to his Father's right hand in Heaven, and that 
He is as ready now, as He was on earth, to fulfill His 
Divine promise, 'Ask, and ye shall receive.' But still 
it will be well to remember that no man can consecrate 
his life to Christ, until he has first consecrated it to the 
service of man. . In Divine order the disciple must eat 
the bread before he drinks the Cup. 

We conclude, then, that the Cup is the Divinely 
appointed symbol, representing internally to the mind 
of Christ, and so expressing in Divine fulness to. all 
His disciples, the Covenant of God in Himself for their 
eternal redemption from sin and death ; not simply in 
His death, nor in any specific act of His life, but as 
including his whole personality and His finished work; 
the whole economy of human redemption, as embraced 
in the Divine purpose, through Him, from first prin- 
ciples to ultimates, from the first promise of salvation 
in time to its fulfillment in eternity. And that it is 
now open to every disciple to drink the Cup, and so 
to ratify on his own behalf, as one of the contracting 
parties, the Covenant for Himself. 

The Cup of the New Covenant in the Lord's blood 
is a symbol on which is stamped the very impress of 
the Divine truth it symbolizes and represents. It ex- 



60 THE LORD'S. SUPPER. 

presses both the Divine and human sides of the Lord's 
life; — obedience to the Father's will absolutely real- 
ized, as well as the precedent resolution and effort to 
accomplish the end. And the promise of the Covenant 
is that if we voluntarily and with full purpose of heart 
drink it, and thus accept the Lord's life as the fountain 
and model of our own, and show that life forth in our 
own, He will enter into us through our endeavor, and 
so become the source of a regenerated spiritual life, 
containing within itself the promise of a Divine natural 
life, and raise us up to His own Divine plane of exist- 
ence, and thus unite us to Himself now and for ever. 

The object of our Lord through the institution of 
the Supper, we may now clearly see, was first to unite 
His disciples in one body through their social and af- 
fectional qualities ; and then, in the Divine strength 
these qualities are capable of embodying, by His Spirit 
working in and through them, to consecrate all of His 
disciples to the service of each other as members of 
the one body of Christ; and the Supper was the school 
or class in which they were to learn this Divine lesson. 

In breaking bread together the natural courtesies of 
social life are brought into play, and would ordinarily 
prevent any rupture of social relations arising from 
differences of temperament and feeling ; while the in- 
crease of social affection in the Spirit of Christ result- 
ing, would necessarily lead to that self-abnegation in 
which mutual service would become the law of their 
daily lives. 

And if, through the weakness of flesh, causes of dis- 
turbance from time to time should arise, drinking the 
Cup — looking to Jesus in the act — would of necessity 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 61 

turn every thought to Himself, teaching them the for- 
giveness of injuries, in which their own spiritual life 
and progress was bound up (Matt. vi. 14, 15); and 
also the needful sacrifice of all selfish feelings for the 
attainment of so good and holy an object as brotherly 
concord and unity, through which alone His Spirit 
could descend and work for their perfect regenera- 
tion, for the restoration of the image and likeness of 
God in their own souls. 

Each and all who sat down to supper were members 
of His body, whose duty and privilege it was to be 
animated by His Spirit, and to become one with Him- 
self. But this union was progressive, and only to be 
attained and understood by experience ; and so the 
new covenant was brought to the knowledge of men 
without any logical definition of its terms or its mean- 
ing. It was left to the experience of successive gen- 
erations to evolve its creative life in greater and still 
greater fulness as they entered into, and had increased 
personal knowledge, of the truth of the Lord's prom- 
ise that ' He would come to and make His abode with 
His disciples,' and so reveal Himself as an ever living 
and regenerative Divine force delivering them from 
the power of sin, and uniting them to Himself, and by 
such union enabling them to participate in His glory 
as well as in His sufferings. 

Rut there is another idea which enters into this sub- 
ject, that requires a special consideration, lying on the 
surface, and yet not realized as it ought to be, nay, 
scarcely reflected upon by many professing Christians 
of the present day. The Church has been so much 
in the habit of looking at the miraculous in the Lord's 



62 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

life, that it seems to have forgotten that law and order 
are elements which enter into the working kingdom of 
God. St. Paul develops this idea by referring to the 
mutual services of the different members of the body 
to each other. And this is as absolutely true of the 
Church as of the human body. The spirit — the life — 
works through all and each of its members. If one 
member is diseased all the members suffer from the 
infirmity. If one member rejoices all the members re- 
joice with it. And so the Spirit of Christ would 
immeasurably extend its power over the hearts of in- 
dividuals, if all were spiritually healthy, and striving 
with one heart and one soul for the same end. 

The strength and potency of fire depends upon the 
amount and concentration of the materials which sup- 
ply the conflagration. Scatter the materials, and the 
fire ceases to glow. It is there, but the heat declines, 
and will soon be extinguished. Concentrate the mate- 
rials, and the intensity of the heat is proportioned to 
the concentration. 

The members of Christ's body stand too much aloof 
from each other. There is little union arising from 
the love of Christ. What union exists in the Church 
even, is little more than the natural love of family and 
friends. No breaking down of the middle walls of 
partition between class and class. Nature first and 
Christ second in the hearts of His professed disciples ! 
If only we could conceive of ten thousand men and 
women living in society imbued with the Spirit of 
Christ ! How the Lord would exult in such triumph- 
ant result of His death. How His Spirit would pass 
electrically from heart to heart, and kindle the love of 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 63 

God in the mass with a potency hitherto unknown. 
We are all guilty. We restrain the work of the Lord 
in our own hearts, and then wonder that the Gospel 
has accomplished so little ! The Lord never compels. 
He can only work in us, and by us, as we are willing 
to be wrought upon and to work with Him. It is 
only by thus opening the doors of our hearts to Him 
that He can enter into and sup with us. 

Before the Church can become in any fulness of 
health the Lord's body, a new order of society must 
arise in it. An order that shall see in the building-up 
of humanity in the image of Christ, an object more 
worthy of the concentration of faculty than the acqui- 
sition of a fortune or a great name for one's self And 
until this is realized, the Kingdom of God can never 
be realized upon earth. 

We now come to the injunction of our Lord in re- 
lation to the Cup ; tovto 7toi8ire P ' This do,' or, ' Ye 
do this whenever ye drink (it) in remembrance of Me.' 
— To call Me to mind, to exhibit My love to the world. 

It will be observed that this injunction is not abso- 
lute and unqualified, like that given in connection with 
the ' breaking of bread,' but leaves the doing of it, in 
some measure, to the free will and choice of the drinker. 

The Greek word noinra, i poieite,' maybe construed 
either as the imperative plural, or as the present tense 
of the indicative of ' poieo.' If taken as the imper- 
ative, it is a command : 'This do, whenever you drink 
(the cup being understood) in remembrance of Me.' 
If taken as the indicative form of the word, it is sim- 
ply a declaration of something accomplished, doing, 
or done : ' Ye do this, whenever ye drink this cup in 
remembrance of Me.' 



64 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

Obviously, the words spoken divide themselves into 
three clauses : (i) a command or affirmation ; (2) a 
condition ; and (3) a purpose or object. 

1. ' This do ; or, Ye do this, 

2. ' Whenever ye drink {it) 

3. 'In remembrance of Me;' or, 'to call Me to 
mind.' 

With reference to the first clause we ask, What 
were the twelve commanded to do ? or, What did they 
accomplish by drinking the Cup in remembrance of 
the^ord ? 

Some construe the words simply as meaning - , 
' Whenever ye drink this cup, drink it in remembrance 
of Me.' But such construction is so tautological, and 
inept, as to be unsatisfactory in a very high degree. 
How was it possible for the disciples to drink the Cup 
of the New Covenant, without drinking it in remem- 
brance of their Saviour ? 

Some think that there is in these words a special 
reference to one of the cups of wine, drunk as a part 
of the Passover feast ; and that our Lord said in 
effect : ' Hereafter, when ye drink this Passover Cup, 
no longer drink it in remembrance of your deliverance 
from Egyptian bondage, but drink it in remembrance 
of Me.' 

But when we consider that this view of the question 
would (1) limit its observance to those who partook of 
the Passover ; and (2) that the Lord had already de- 
clared the Cup to be the New Covenant in His own 
blood ; and (3) that the institution of the Cup — as the 
Covenant of God in Christ — infinitely transcends the 
Jewish rite, in its importance and universality ; and 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 65 

that it was to be drunk by all Christians alike, whether 
Jews or Gentiles ; this view, also, seems to be utterly 
untenable. 

If we take ' This do ' as covering all the particulars 
of the service ; we must carefully ascertain what the 
Lord did on the occasion when the words were spoken. 
The Lord did four things : 

1. He took the Cup in His hands. 

2. He gave thanks over it. 

3. He gave it to His disciples. 

4. He spoke the words : ' This Cup is the New 
Covenant in My own blood. This do in remembrance 
of Me.' 

Now, the disciple to whom the Cup was given must 
take it in his hands and he must pass it on to his 
neighbor at the table. But he could not speak the 
words spoken by the Lord. The only thing possible 
for him to avoid doing was * giving thanks over it ; ' 
but if this had been the Lord's meaning by the words 
' This do,' might we not reasonably have expected 
Him to have said, ' Give thanks over the cup when- 
ever ye drink it in remembrance of Me ■ ? 

The fact is that the conditioning clause, ' as often 
as/ or ' whenever ye drink it,' cannot be satisfactorily 
harmonized with the words ' This do/ read as a Divine 
command. The intervening clause implies and pre- 
supposes conditions ; implies and allows a certain 
liberty of judgment, and a freedom of action incompat- 
ible with a universal duty imposed by a Divine law, 
such as that enjoined in ' breaking the bread.' 

Let us now turn our attention to the alternative 
construction of ' poieite/ as the second person plural 



66 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

of the present tense of the indicative mood ; and read 
' Ye do this/ You make this Covenant — you volunta- 
rily enter into it, on your own behalf, as often as ye 
drink this Cup in remembrance of Me. By this act 
you accept and renew for yourselves the New Cove- 
nant of God in Me, and bring yourselves within its 
scope, and so for yourselves make God a party to its 
fulfilment. By drinking this Cup you accept it as the 
symbol of My life of self-renunciation and self-sacrifice 
for the good of the human race, and pledge yourselves 
to take Me for your example, and to walk in My foot- 
steps as your pathway to immortal life. You thus 
make yourselves one with Me, in the object and pur- 
pose of your lives ; and one with God, as fellow work- 
ers with Him, in His Divine purpose of mercy to the 
human race. And God will thus unite you to Him- 
self by an indissoluble bond enduring throughout 
eternity.' 

We venture to think that this plain palpable mean- 
ing of the words of the Lord Jesus, is more worthy of 
the occasion, and more in harmony with the Divine 
institution, than any meaning which can be drawn 
from them, if interpreted as a Divine command. 

And in perfect harmony with this interpretation the 
Apostle goes on to say, ' For as often as ye eat this 
bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of 
the Lord until He come,' by which proclamation St. 
Paul understood a declaration of the immutability of 
the New Covenant and the faithful acceptance of it on 
the part of the partakers ; ' until He come,' which 
second coming would be the fulfilment of the Cove- 
nant on the part of God, when of course the purpose 



THE LORD'S SUPPER, 67 

of the Supper being fulfilled, the service would cease 
to> be observed. ... So that he who shall eat the 
bread or drink the Cup of the Lord unworthily, will 
be held in the unity of the body of the Lord, which is 
the Church, and in the unity of the blood of the Lord, 
which is the Divine life of the Lord — the foundation 
and spring and source of the Church itself, and of all 
the blessings of the Covenant — for judgment. (See Ap- 
pendix C). ' Let each one, therefore, test himself,' — 
whether he understands what he is doing, and the 
obligations he is taking upon himself by the act, — and 
so let him eat of the loaf and drink of the Cup, for he 
who eats and drinks, without discerning his own unity 
with the body of Christ through the Covenant, without 
apprehending his own relation to the body, of which 
by the act he professes himself to be a member, eats 
and drinks a judgment upon himself. He brings a 
spiritual influence into himself out of harmony with 
his own life, which can only end in his own temporal 
destruction. And so the Apostle goes on to say, 
* Through such eating and drinking many are weak 
and sickly among you, and quite a number sleep in 
death. . . . But being thus judged, we are chastened 
by the Lord/ in this present life, that we should not 
at the end of the age be condemned with the unbe- 
lieving world. 

And the conclusion of all is in perfect harmony with 
the views now set forth. ' Wherefore, my brethren, 
when ye come together to eat, wait for, or more cor- 
rectly receive from, each other. And if any one hun- 
ger, let him eat at home, that ye do not come together 
for judgment.' 



68 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

The Lord's Supper necessarily presupposes the 
presence of the Lord. Wherever the Lord's Supper 
is eaten, He by His own promise is present, not as a 
mere human presence standing outside, and looking 
on with approbation, but as spiritually operative in 
every soul, uniting it to Himself. 

This great fact is often overlooked and seldom real- 
ized as it should be. The Lord by those words, ' Ye 
do this,' transfers His own life and life-work to His 
disciples assembling in His name. Whenever and 
wherever the bread is broken and the Cup is drunk in 
harmony with the Lord's injunction, the Lord is in 
spiritual union with His disciples, and, so to speak, 
gathering them up into Himself — working in them 
and through them, so that in truth and fact He works 
the good of which they are the privileged mediums. 
And so the Covenant of God in Him is renewed con- 
tinually to His disciples by this service. 

Hence we may see that in St. Paul's view of this 
solemn subject there is a very real and vital transub- 
stantiation of the bread which is eaten in the Lord's 
Supper, but that this transubstantiation only takes 
place after digestion and assimilation in the body of 
the eater, who is a member of the body of Christ. 

And secondly, that in drinking the Cup, and so 
accepting the self-sacrificing love of Christ as a living 
and ever operative spiritual principle in the believer's 
own soul, there is a true and real, but ever renewed, 
offering up of the Lord Christ in the person of His 
disciple. For it is only by virtue of the union of the 
Saviour with the believer that the offering could be 
made at all. 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 69 

The vow to live after the example of Christ, and 
the corresponding consecration of the believer's life, 
are the fruit of the outflowing life of Christ in the 
disciple. As St. Paul says : ' It is not he, but Christ 
living in him,' that works in him and enables him to 
do the works. And as the experience of every good 
man will show how dreadful and agonizing a thing it 
is to live in an atmosphere of impurity — to bear the 
shame of another's sin with whom he is bound up by 
ties of relationship and love — so a corresponding 
agony, only manifoldly increased, must clearly be felt 
by the Saviour when He is engaged in uniting Him- 
self to a sinful brother for the purpose of saving him 
from spiritual death and hell. 

We are too ready to suppose that the Lord Jesus, 
being now at the right hand of the Father, knows 
nothing of the indwelling sin of His disciples or the 
sufferings that flow from it ; but a little clear thought 
will show that sin is a spiritual disease, and to bear it 
away the Lord must take it into Himself, or it would 
never be extirpated from the human heart. And 
there is the same, only infinitely more poignant feel- 
ing, between the contact of sin and supreme holiness, 
as there is between sin and the sanctified human heart. 
We are to become one with Christ if we are to be 
saved by Him. There is only one body. The Lord 
must work in and through us, and unite Himself to us 
little by little until in our spiritual growth we shall 
unite the most perfect freedom of will with the most 
perfect surrender of self; always and in everything 
seeking to do the will of God on earth as it is done in 
heaven. 



70 THE LORD'S SUPPER, 



CHAPTER V. 

The Organization of the Church. 

Organization is the great fact of life. There can 
be no manifested life without organization — i.e., with- 
out an organism to hold it and show it forth. There 
can be no species without power of reproduction, and 
no spiritual union without an organization to give it 
outward manifestation. 

The mission of the Lord Jesus Christ would have 
been lost to mankind if He had not, in some way or 
other, organized or planted His own Divine forces and 
attributes in human nature, with power of reproduction 
or of extension in the organization. 

Our Lord Himself likened the kingdom of God to 
leaven, which a woman took and hid in meal, till the 
whole was leavened, and so made more capable of 
human bodily assimilation ; as also to seed scattered 
by the sower, which found in the soil elements need- 
ful for its own growth and evolution, and for this pur- 
pose appropriated them to its own use, and so grew 
into its perfected state, capable of reproducing itself, 
for the further supply of human wants and needs. 

A deeper insight into the laws and operations of 
lite would perhaps show a common fundamental 
principle in both of these methods of extension and 
growth. 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 71 

But the great fact is that the Lord Jesus did plant 
the seed of His own Divine life in the natural human 
world, the world in which we live ; that He did form 
a human organization on earth which He called His 
body, in which that life could find elements capable of 
harmonious conformation to itself, and suitable for its 
own sustenance and reproduction ; and that He did this 
while in full possession of all His natural conditions* 
powers, and attributes. 

This life was first divinely organized in His own 
human body, as the Word made Flesh, through which 
body, by the operation of Divine natural methods of 
communication, He planted seeds of Divine knowledge 
in His sympathetic hearers. This willingness of re- 
ception was the human soil required for the planting 
of the Divine seed. Where two or three meet to- 
gether animated by the same feelings, sympathies, 
and desires, there is a mutual invigoration arising from 
the inflowing and interflowing Divine life, embodied 
in the words spoken and in the affections created, and 
in this way communicated to and through the souls 
of the assembled disciples to each other. This know- 
ledge impregnating the minds, and this spiritual life 
poured into the hearts of the recipients, is the repro- 
duction of the same Divine life that first had its human 
habitation in the body of the Lord Jesus ; and so, 
through this channel, the infinite fountain of Divine 
truth and love is opened up to mankind, bringing man 
into heavenly relations and conditions ; lifting him out 
of, and raising him above nature, and so preparing 
him for evolution into the next higher degree of life 
for which he was ordained. 



72 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

This second human extension, or embodiment, of 
the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, and which He called His 
' body,' St. Paul called ' the Ecclesia ' — ' the Church.' 
So long as men obey and voluntarily give themselves 
up to the spiritual inspirations of the Lord, they are 
as truly His body as His flesh and blood form, known 
as Jesus, in Capernaum. The organization known as 
the Church only ceases to be His body when it be- 
comes subject to the depraved natural motions of its 
members, seeking to make it the foundation of their 
own self-love and evil cupidities. 

There was no word or expression so appropriate or 
suited to the needs of the occasion as that of ' My 
body ' when the Lord instituted the Supper for His 
perpetual memorial. The word taught and embodied 
His own relations to mankind. 

A new Spirit from God had descended into nature ; 
first into and through* the body of flesh of the Lord 
Jesus, and then through the Lord Jesus into humanity. 
But it was the same Spirit — the same Word of God — 
the same Divine life coming to work through, and 
embody itself in mankind, that was already in opera- 
tion in Him, and it could only work on the same lines 
and show itself in similar fruit. St. Paul never lost 
sight of this ; but to distinguish the individual societies 
he formed from all other societies of Jews and Gentiles, 
he named them - ecclesia ' (which has somehow, not 
very clearly, got translated into the word ' Church '), 
which has for its root-meaning the idea of being 
' called out.' But in St. Paul's sense the word could 
have had no existence before, because the idea 
embodied in it was only then in process of evolution 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 73 

and formation ; but still he held before his own mind, 
and ever kept steadily in view, the grander idea and 
the grander phrase, which represents the origin and 
constitution of the Churches as 'the body of Christ.' 
The Gentile world knew nothing of the body of 
Christ. The Jewish world repudiated it. The Jewish 
people regarded themselves as the people of God and 
their organized community as the kingdom of God. 
They derived their existence from Abraham, their 
name from Israel, their national organization from 
Moses, their kingdom from David ; and such inheri- 
tance and such birthright privileges were, in their 
estimation, a greater honor than any the crucified 
Jesus of Nazareth could confer. The Jew, even when 
he accepted the Lord Jesus as the Christ, had no am- 
bition to put on the outward garb of the Christian 
name — to lose the nationality which he held in him- 
self by becoming a member of the body of Christ. 
'The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.' 
This name broke down the middle wall of partition 
between him and the Gentile. Such change of name 
could not fail to be regarded as a degradation of 
national character and privilege. He looked upon the 
Messiah as belonging of Divine right to himself and 
his nation, a possession which of itself separated him 
from, rather than united him to, the Gentile world. 
The very office of the Christ was to serve the ambitious 
hopes of himself and his nation. To be a member of 
the body of Christ reduced him at once to the level 
of the hated Gentiles, and this feeling of national pride 
the Jew never overcame. We see here ground and 
motive enough for the Jew to seek another meaning 



74 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

for the words, ' This is my body/ than that which 
they were intended to convey ; and the priestly 
element permeating fallen, sinful humanity, supplied 
all that was wanting to present the perverted idea 
acceptably to the ignorant and superstitious Jewish and 
Gentile mind. 

Far different the Apostle Paul. He glories in the 
faith that he was a member of the body of Christ. To 
him it was the greatest honor, the noblest privilege of 
discipleship. But the Jewish Apostles James and 
Peter ignore both the fact and the idea. And we have 
no reason to suppose that either of them ever realized 
the Divine truth that the Gentile Christian was the 
equal of his Jewish brother. We know that some 
twenty years, or thereabouts, after Peter had received 
a special revelation on the subject, that Gentiles were 
to be received into the Church, and therefore, as 
members of Christ's body, were to be admitted to 
equal privileges with himself in that relation, he would 
not sit down with his Gentile brother at the Lord's 
table in Antioch (Gal. ii. II, 12). And that this feel- 
ing was predominant among the Jews, there is abun- 
dant evidence to prove. 

Indeed, previous to the destruction of Jerusalem, 
the Jewish members of the Church never seem to have 
risen above their Judaism. And after the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem, which gave the death-blow to their 
Messianic hopes, the Jewish nation universally rejected 
Jesus as their Messiah, and a body of Christians 'zealous 
of the law ' at once cease to exist. The leaders of the 
Church in Jerusalem pandered to the exclusiveness of 
their followers. In obedience to this feeling they pre- 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 75 

vailed on Paul to act the hypocrite by presenting himself 
before the Jews publicly in a form which was alien to 
his character. And their only excuse was, 'Thou 
seest, brother, how many thousands there are among 
the Jews of them that have believed, and they are all 
zealous for the law.' (Acts xxi. 20). 

The first lesson of the religion of Christ is brother- 
hood and equality in the Church, as members of one 
body ; but in the opinion of these leaders of the 
Church — these pre-eminent Apostles, as St. Paul 
names them (2 Cor. xi. 5) — believers who acknow- 
ledged their authority, could be members of the 
Church of Christ, not only before they had learned 
the first lesson of Christian brotherhood, but even 
without practicing the simplest duties involved in the 
relationship. 

A false doctrine, like that of the Greek and Romish 
transubstantiation, would naturally take some time 
before it could establish itself as the orthodox doctrine. 
That it was beginning to show itself in St. Paul's days 
is, we think, abundantly manifest from his later 
epistles, especially those to the Ephesians and Coloss- 
ians. It is scarcely conceivable that St. Paul could 
have so emphasized his doctrine of the Church being 
the body of Christ if he had not been driven to it by 
a perception of the danger of the false doctrine of the 
bread of the Lord's Supper being the body of Christ, 
which he saw was then entering the Church, and 
spreading more widely, and which clearly required for 
its suppression such emphasis of statement. As time 
passes on we have historical evidence of the develop- 
ment of the false doctrine. The third of the synoptic 



76 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

Gospels, which bears the name of St. Luke, and which 
is the oldest of the synoptics in their present form, 
contains a narrative almost identical with St. Paul's, 
and certainly contains nothing that cannot be har- 
monized with it. The first development of the Jewish 
doctrine is found in the second Gospel, attributed to 
St. Mark. Not till we arrive at the one now named 
after St. Matthew, is it that we have the first full 
liturgical form of the perverted doctrine which has 
became the keynote of all the later Eastern and Latin 
liturgies. 

That this doctrine was not received by a large 
number of the Churches at the beginning of the sec- 
ond century is evident from the ' Teaching of the 
Twelve Apostles,' which on this point is in perfect 
agreement with St. Paul. And the well-known letter 
of Pliny, written in the first decade of the second cen- 
tury, shows that the Christians of Bithynia and Pon- 
tus, at that period, ate the Lord's Supper as an even- 
ing meal. 

The first form of. the celebration of the Lord's 
Supper by the Churches was an imitation of the last 
supper of the Lord with His disciples. While other 
kinds of food had been, and perhaps were on the 
table, the Lord made a loaf the only article of His 
memorial feast. 

We can easily see how Divine honors began to be 
paid to the loaf, the eating of which formed so impor- 
tant a part in the daily worship and organization of 
the Church, without charging the first teachers of the 
doctrine with any designed falsehood. We must re- 
member that eating the bread was a seal of the eater 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 77 

being a member of the Church — of the body of Christ. 
How easy, how natural for the ignorant and supersti- 
tious disciple to believe that the bread with such asso- 
ciations must have Divine properties and attributes ; 
and when such a faith came into existence on the part 
of an ignorant and superstitious people, the teachers, 
sympathizing with the mental condition of the taught 
by changing the application of the words, might 
gradually grow into a faith which had so much in it 
to appeal at one and the same time to the love of 
mystery in the human heart, and their own personal 
interests, for persuasion, extenuation, justification, and 
reception. 

The inseparable symbol would gradually concen- 
trate upon itself the attention and regard due to the 
thing signified. We cannot suppose that conversion, 
however important to the individual himself, and 
however great the change wrought in his spiritual 
nature would remove all traces of previous nature and 
habit. And when a priest, Jewish or pagan, entered 
the Church, he necessarily brought with him much, if 
not all his ignorance, a large measure of his supersti- 
tion ; and some, at least, of his priestly associations 
and assumptions. Certainly he would bring with him 
some of that desire for personal deference to which he 
had been accustomed. And ordinary courtesy of 
itself would lead his new friends to pay him honor. 
As priest-president of the assembly, he would often 
lead in prayer and thanksgiving, and in conducting 
the regular services of the Church. The phrase, 
'This is My body,' as a part of the service spoken 
while the bread was in the hands of the speaker, when 



78 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

the eyes of the assembled worshippers were directed 
to him and it, would naturally grow to be connected 
with the bread which was broken, and the true idea 
of the transubstantiation of the body of the eater into 
the body of Christ would easily be transferred by the 
equally ignorant, superstitious, and perhaps designing 
priest, who saw in the rite the foundation of his own 
office and personal dignity, to the bread which formed 
so prominent an element in the service. 

Jewish exclusiveness and Jewish superstition laid 
the foundations of the new and false doctrine, and 
priestcraft fixed the coping-stone. 

That this is substantially the history of the origin 
of the doctrine of Transubstantiation, though we can- 
not now offer specific evidence of the fact in all its 
details, is as certain as that the doctrine arose in the 
Church on the ruins of the institution of the Lord's 
Supper. 

The Church of Christ knows nothing of priests or a 
priesthood, other than the fact that all the Lord's 
people are priests, and that the Christian priesthood 
is co-extensive with the Church. 

But the same superstitious element in human nature 
that began to see in the bread of the Lord's Supper 
the body of Christ, gave birth also to the necessity of 
a separate priest to stand and mediate between the 
Lord and His people. The false doctrine and the 
false priesthood support each other, and they stand or 
fall together. 

And there can be no return to the first and true 
faith of the Church, until ' the body of Christ ' is 
identified with the union of all true believers in Him ; 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 79 

nor any spread of the true Christian life until each 
Christian realizes the nobility of the privilege to which 
he is called, as one of a Divine brotherhood, which in 
its fulness constitutes the body of Christ ; the symbol 
of which body and brotherhood is a common family 
table, which is at the same time the table of the Lord ; 
nor until he recognizes as the principle of duty towards 
his brethren of this Divine brotherhood — the Church 
which is the Lord's body- — the consecration of all 
faculty and power and influence, as opportunity 
allows, to its service. And this consecration has its 
symbol in the Cup ; nor until he further recognizes as 
his principle of duty towards the world and the flesh, 
the self-denial, the self-renunciation of the Lord Jesus, 
which has its symbol in the Cross. 

These three symbols, the Cross, the Table, and the 
Cup, include and express the whole circle of the Christ- 
ian life ; and are each equally essential to its true 
ideal, as the practice of the corresponding duty ex- 
pressed by and involved in the symbols is also essential 
to the attainment of the Divine inheritance, purchased 
by the Lord Jesus Christ for all who love and serve in 
His Spirit — the crown of everlasting life. 



8o THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



APPENDIX A, page 7. 

'KOINONIA.' — We have seen that 'koinonia' has for 
its primary meaning, a society, a partnership, a brother- 
hood ; possessing, enjoying, or participating in com- 
mon ; oneness, or unity of a number, for a common 
object or purpose ; and that the word is also used to 
express the common bond or purpose of union ; and, 
lastly, to express the symbol employed to give a rec- 
ognized expression to the union itself. But it is clear 
that it cannot mean, and- never does mean, any indi- 
vidual participation of the privileges which belong to 
the partnership or brotherhood collectively. 

Thus an army is a ' koinonia,' but the word could 
not be applied to express the dignity, or status, or 
rank, or emoluments, or privileges of any one of the 
body. The kingdom of England is a ' koinonia,' with 
a variety of symbols; e.g., the national standard, the 
national flag, the great seal ; but the symbols express 
the unity of the whole, not of any individual partici- 
pation in or of them. 

Thus the symbol of Government is the Parliament, 
but the word 'koinonia' could not be used to distin- 
guish the special privileges of any individual member 
of that Parliament. 

The national flag is a ' koinonia,! but only because 
it is the symbol of the nation. It cannot be divided. 
The great seal may be described by the word, but 
only because it is the symbol of the kingdom. 

The word ' koinonia' occurs nineteen times in the 
New Testament : once in Acts ii. 42 ; thirteen times 
in the Epistles of St. Paul (Rom. xx. 26 ; 1 Cor. i. 9 ; 
2 Cor. vi. 14, viii. 4, ix. 13, x. 16, and xiii. 14; Gal. 
ii. 9; Philip, i. 5, ii. r, and iii. 10; Philemon, ver. 6; 
once in Heb. xiii. 16; four times in 1 John i. 3, 6, 7). 

The revised translation renders the word twelve 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 81 

times by 'fellowship,' three times by 'communion' 
(with the marginal reading of 'participation'), and 
once by ' communication ; ' twice by ' contribution,' 
and once by ' to communicate.' 

The word, as we have seen, expresses a simple and 
clear idea; while there can be no doubt that its uses 
are somewhat elastic, in relation to the variety of facts 
it is connected with in the Apostle's writings, its root 
idea is always there, and can never be lost sight of, 
except at the expense of truth and rationality. And 
the ideas of union and collective or united possession 
can never be expressed by words which signify indi- 
vidual and separate participation. 

Let us take these passages seriatim. 

Acts ii. 42. — The exact meaning of the word in 
this passage admits of no certain explanation. But it 
seems to indicate the fact that the Christian disciples 
were being organized, and had been so up to a certain 
point, and so far were a 'koinonia.' But also, which 
is important to notice, that they had then no other 
name to express their union. The word 'church' in 
its Christian sense had no existence at this period. 
The historian does not record that the three thousand 
converts of the previous day were admitted to any 
Church, but that they ' employed themselves in listen- 
ing to, and accepting the teachings of the Apostles ; 
and were faithful to the obligations of the unity — 
'koinonia' — thence derived in the breaking of bread,' 
'and in the daily prayers' of the Temple. And the 
recognition of these common services and duties formed 
the members into a 'koinonia.' 

Romans xv. 26. — ' For it has been the good pleas- 
ure of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain " koi- 
nonia" for the poor among the saints that are at 
Jerusalem.' We have already spoken of the use of 
the word as somewhat elastic ; and the meaning ' con- 
tribution,' which it undoubtedly has in this passage, 
may be looked at as an illustration of the fact. The 



82 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

'contribution' here spoken of was the aggregate of 
the numerous individual donations of the Christians of 
Macedonia and Achaia. They were put together into 
a common fund for a common purpose, and in that 
unity were an organized expression of the good-will 
and benevolence of the givers towards the poor Jews 
at Jerusalem. So far as this idea of union or amalga- 
mation is involved, the common fund possesses the 
necessary element of a ' koinonia,' but only in relation 
to the fund itself. And so far as the administration of 
the fund was concerned, the diaconate appointed for 
this purpose was also a ' koinonia.' But the donators 
who subscribed the money, and the diaconate who 
administered the relief, did not share any part of the 
money amongst themselves, and the poor Jews in 
Jerusalem formed no part of either of these ' koino- 
nias,' whose object was their relief. So far as they 
were concerned it was a fund simply for the relief of 
their distress. They only shared in the division of a 
fund which by this process was dissolved. 

I Corinthians i. 9 : ' God is faithful, by whom ye 
were called into the " koinonia" of His Son Jesus 
Christ our Lord.' What the Apostle means by 4 koi- 
nonia' here is what he describes in his Epistle to the 
Ephesians (i. 9), as the 'mystery of God's will, that 
He would unite under one head all things in the 
heavens and in the earth in the Christ;' and which is 
exactly what our Lord prayed for after the Supper : 
' Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also 
that believe on Me through their word ; that they all 
may be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I 
in Thee, that they also may be in us : that the world 
may believe that Thou didst send Me. And the glory 
which Thou hast given Me I have given them ; that 
they may be One, even as we are One ; I in them, and 
Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into unity ; 
that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and 
lovedst them, as Thou lovedst Me' (John xvii. 20-23). 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 83 

1 Corinthians x. 16 we have already fully considered. 

2 Corinthians vi. 14. — The Apostle here asks the 
question, 'What "koinonia" hath light with darkness?' 
What common ground of union is there between the 
two elements ? 

2 Corinthians viii. 4 : ' Pressing upon us the care 
of this fund' (their united subscriptions for the poor 
Christians in Jerusalem) ' and that we should form a 
" koinonia" — a committee, a united body specially ap- 
pointed for the service.' 

We have already had occasion to refer to this matter 
in our observations upon Romans xv. 26. 

The diaconate for the administration of the fund was 
a ' koinonia.' specially called into existence for this 
purpose. 

2 Corinthians ix. 13. — For the performance of this 
relief service not only abundantly meets the wants of 
the saints, but calls forth much thankfulness to God — 
the service itself thus bringing glory to God, and being 
at the same time the proof of your having taken your 
place in the ranks of open confession to the Gospel of 
Christ ; as well as to the liberality (of the 'koinonia') 
of your contribution (i. e., of the fund formed by your 
united donations for the purpose of relieving indigent 
Jews at Jerusalem), for the benefit individually of those 
for whom you intended it. 

2 Corinthians xiii. 14: 'The grace of the Lord Jesus 
Christ and the love of God, and the " koinonia" of the 
Holy Spirit' — i.e., the Divine bond of all union with 
Christ — 'be with you all.' 

Galatians ii. 9: 'When they saw that I was entrusted 
with the Gospel of the uncircumcision, even as Peter 
was with the Gospel of the circumcision, James and 
Cephas and John gave to me and Barnabas the right 
hands of "koinonia"' — i.e., gave full expression by 
the union of their hands with ours, to their spiritual 
sympathy and cordial union with us, in our purposes 
as we also with them in theirs — ' that we should go 



84 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

unto the Gentiles as the field of labor we assigned to 
ourselves ; and they unto the circumcision ; only they 
would that we should remember the poor, which I also 
was earnestly desirous of doing.' 

Philippians i. 5 : 'I thank my God . . . for your 
" koinonia " in the Gospel, from the first day until now ' 
— i. e. } for your fellowship or partnership with us in 
the Gospel, from the first day until now. 

Chap. ii. 1 : ' If there be any " koinonia, " any unity 
— of spirit, fill up the measure of my joy, that ye be 
of the same mind, having the same love, (being) one- 
souled, thinking in harmony.' 

Chap. iii. 10: 'That I may know Him and the 
Divine force of His resurrection, and the " koinonia " 
of (be united with Him in) ' His sufferings even by 
comformation to His death, if only I could attain unto 
the resurrection from the dead.' 

Philemon, verses 4, 6 : I thank my God, making 
mention of thee in my prayers. . . . that the " koi- 
nonia " ' (the uniting bond) ' of thy faith may become 
effectual in the knowledge of every good thing in us 
unto Christ' 

Hebrews xiii. 16 : To do good and to communicate 
forget not.' The use of the word here, like its use in 
Acts ii. 42, gives no help to the reader to ascertain 
the exact meaning of the writer. 

But the sentiment expressed is clearly this : Be not 
unmindful of the common charities of life, and of the 
brotherhood to which you belong. 

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, like 
James and Peter, ignores the Pauline use of the word 
1 ekklesia.' He could not use the word 'synagogue' 
to describe a local assembly of believers, and so it 
would seem he took refuge in ' koinonia.' 

The Christians in Jerusalem, no doubt, had their 
own ' koinonias ' — special meetings for Christian in- 
struction, for prayer and praise. But underneath this, 
and outside of this, they were still Jews, and they 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 85 

frequented the Temple services as part of their relig- 
ious duties. They were essentially Jews, accepting 
Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, and that only. They 
were dogmatically farther from the Pauline conception 
of the Christ than the heathen Gentiles were. 

It is not improbable that the ' eupoia ' and the 
■ koinonia ' spoken of in this passage may have been 
guilds or societies formed for the purpose of relieving 
distress, as well as for cultivating spirituality of mind 
amongst brethren who lived in the same neighbor- 
hood, and that for such purposes periodical contribu- 
tions to a common fund were made by the members. 

1 John i. 3, 6, 7 : ' That which ye have seen and 
heard we declare unto you also, that ye may have 
" koinonia" with us; yea, and our "koinonia" is with 
the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. . . . If any 
say that we have " koinonia " with Him, and walk in 
the darkness, we lie, and do not the truth ; but if we 
walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have 
" koinonia" one with the other.' The word repeated 
four times in these three verses has without doubt its 
ordinary Scriptural meaning — oneness, union, or uni- 
ty ; the meaning of the petitions in our Lord's inter- 
cessory prayer ; the meaning involved in the Apostle's 
phrase, ' the body of Christ ' — a dynamic spiritual 
union of the Lord with His people — ONE BODY, ONE 
SPIRIT, and God the Universal Father, through His 
Son Jesus Christ, ALL in ALL. 

APPENDIX B, page 15. 
' Soma.' — At the risk of some repetition, it will not be 
without use to consider this subject on purely philo- 
logical and scientific grounds, to show by an analytic 
and exhaustive process the meanings and applications 
of the word 'soma' as they are found in the New 
Testament. 

There is no difficulty in the word itself. It ex- 
presses no mystery, is not even tinctured with imagi- 



86 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

nation. It is quite a prosaic, commonplace word. 
Its synonym is found in every known language, and 
the idea expressed by it is common to the universal 
thought of mankind. 

* Body,' which is the English translation of ' soma,' 
when used in relation to man or the animal creation, 
may be described as a natural organism intended for 
the performance and fulfilment of the common func- 
tions of natural life ; as the external, natural, material 
clothing of the psyche whose form it takes ; as a form 
holding within itself in the various stages of its exis- 
tence the capacity and power needful for its own 
growth and reproduction. But as no human language, 
which mainly exists for the expression of common 
needs and feelings, can retain a purely scientific char- 
acter, the word ' body,' which primarily expresses the 
idea of an organism connected with life and motion, is 
used also to signify the form of the organism so long 
as it retains its original shape after the life has de- 
parted from it. 

The body is the outward form of the man, and the 
word is commonly used in the New Testament for the 
expression of a separate and individual member of the 
human race ; as a rhetorical expression emphasizing 
individuality. But the word is not only applied to 
express or signify that congeries of organs which in 
the form of man or animal is said to live and die, to 
work and rest, to wake and sleep. It is also applied 
to any sufficient number of individuals who are con- 
nected or united in purpose for a common object. 
Thus we speak of the ' body ' of the people, the 
' body ' of an army, the ' body ' of a congregation. 
Any union of men who acknowledge a common law, 
or follow a common impulse, or who submit them- 
selves to a common spiritual control, may be described 
as a body ; and it may also be applied figuratively to 
signify any congeries of organic substances, or ele- 
ments acting in unison by natural law. 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 87 

There is no 'soma,' or ' body,' as the word is used 
in the New Testament, except under one or other of 
these conditions. 

Every ' soma,' or ' body,' is thus primarily the ex- 
ternal symbol, or sign, of an internal psyche, or 
motive force, which gives to it its special form and 
character. 

The ' soma,' then, is an organ for the manifestation 
of life, or some self-moving power, or it may, for a 
time, be applied to the continuous form of the organ 
after the life has departed from it ; or it is called into 
conscious existence by a common purpose of a num- 
ber consciously, or even unconsciously, uniting and 
working together in harmony. There is no exception 
to these conditions, and therefore the Lord, when He 
said, ' This is My body ' — in using the word He must, 
if He used the word intelligently, and what Christian 
can doubt it ? — could have had no other idea in His 
mind than that of the disciples before Him who were 
united by a common faith in Him, and animated by 
His Spirit dwelling in them. 

The disciples of Christ considered as a Church are a 
1 body/ by virtue of their common faith in Him as 
their Saviour ; and in and through the Supper He 
acknowledges them as such. ' This breaking of bread 
together in remembrance of Me,' for the ' renewal of 
My memory, makes' — constitutes — 'you My body.' 
They were His body by virtue of their union with 
Him. 

The idea of the piece of bread, made by human 
hands, having neither life nor motion, which He broke 
to His disciples, being the body spoken of, is utterly 
irrational and impossible. It cannot be found in the 
words spoken. It has no foundation in the meaning 
of the word, or in the possibilities of fact. The Lord 
could not have used the words which the compiler of 
the first Gospel has put into His mouth. The Lord's 
words have been falsified, and the false doctrine has 



88 THE LORD'S SUFFER. 

been built upon their falsification. The Lord did not 
speak the words, ' Take, eat,' for if He had, the fact 
would have been communicated to the Apostle Paul 
for him so to teach the Churches he formed. The 
Supper is not a sacrament as that word is defined by 
the theologians, of which dogma not a trace is to be 
found in the Apostle's writings, but a social institution, 
holding within itself the kingdom of God, which the 
Lord Jesus came to establish upon the earth. 

The words actually spoken by our Lord on this 
occasion, as reported by the Apostle Paul, not only 
do not teach the doctrine of transubstantiation, they 
cannot even hold it. If the Lord had intended to 
reveal such a doctrine, He must have taught it by 
another form of words. As the facts stand before us 
at the present time, the word* artos ' (' bread ') cannot 
be connected with the word ' touto ' (' this '). They 
are separated by the impassable gulf of grammatical 
gender. The word ' touto ' (' this ') can only be 
grammatically construed with the word ' deipnon ' 
(' supper '), or with the general idea involved in the 
phrase ' breaking of bread ' by a number ; and this 
done with the object and purpose of renewing the 
memory of the Lord Christ ; which act constitutes the 
communicants, the outward body of Christ. 

The word ' soma ' (' body ') occurs in the New 
Testament some 145 times. 

In ninety-two of these passages (a) the word ex- 
presses a general idea of an animal creature, or the idea 
of a definite, or of an abstract human personality, or 
the external appearance of a Divine or spiritual life. 

In four {b) it expresses the external of vegetable 
life. 

In twenty-three (c) it is found in connection with 
the phrase ' body of Christ * expressed or understood. 
But this only in the writings of St. Paul. There are 
two passages in the Epistle to the Hebrews where 
'soma' is connected with 'Christ.' The first, x. 5, a 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 89 

quotation from Psalm xl. : 'a body hast Thou pre- 
pared for Me.' The second, x. 10 : 'We have been 
sanctified by the offering of the body of Christ once 
for all.' And once in the Epistle of Peter," ii. 24-. 
' . . . who His own self bare our sins in His own 
body on the tree.' But it is clear that the writers in 
each instance had in view the body which was crucified. 
No other New Testament writer grasped the Pauline 
idea of the Church being ' the body of Christ.' 

In four passages (d) it occurs in connection with 
the Lord's Supper. 

In twenty-one passages (e) it signifies a human or 
animal organism from which the life has departed. 
In thirteen of these passages it refers to the crucified 
body of the Lord Jesus. 

In one passage (/) it signifies the whole body of 
Jewish Christians. 

a. Matt. v. 29, 30 ; vi. 22, 22, 23, 25, 25 ; x. 28, 28 ; 
xxvi. 12. Mark v. 29; xiv. 8. Luke xi. 34, 34, 34, 
36; xii. 4, 22, 23. John ii. 21. Rom. i. 24; iv. 19; 
vi. 6, 12; vii. 24; viii. 10, II, 13, 23; xii. 1, 4. 
1 Cor. v. 3 ; vi. 13, 13, 16, 18, 18, 19, 20 ; vii. 4, 4, 34 ; 
ix. 27 ; xii. 12, 12, 12, 14, 15,15, 16, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 
22, 23, 24, 25 ; xiii. 3 ; xv. 40, 40, 44, 44, 44. 2 Cor. 
iv. 10, 10; v. 6, 8, 10; xii. 2, 2, 3, 3. Gal. vi. 17. 
Eph. v. 28. Phil. i. 20; iii. 21. Col. i. 22 ; ii. 11, 23. 
I Thes. v. 23. Heb. x. 5, 10, 22. James ii. 16; iii. 
2, 3, 6. 1 Peter ii. 24. Rev. xviii. 13. 

b. 1 Cor. xv. 35, 37, 38, 38. 

c. Rom. vii. 4; xii. 5. 1 Cor. vi. 15 ; x. 16, 17 ; xi. 
27, 29 ; xii. 13, 17. Eph. i. 23 ; ii. 16 ; iv. 4, 12, 16, 16 ; 
v. 23, 30. Phil. iii. 21. Col. i. 18, 24; ii. 17, 19; iii. 15. 

d. Matt. xxvi. 26. Mark xiv. 22. Luke xxii. 19. 
1 Cor. xi. 24. 

e. Matt. xiv. 12 ; xxvii. 52, 58, 58, 59. Mark xv. 
43,45. Luke xvii. 37; xxiii. 52, 55; xxiv. 3,23. 
John xix. 31, 38, 38, 40 ; xx. 12. Acts ix. 40. Heb. 
xii. 11. James ii. 26. Judeverse9; 



90 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

f. Heb. xiii. 3. 

Life, or a conscious purpose that has its origin in 
life, lies at the foundation, and is the operating cause 
of every ' soma ' or ' body ' described or referred to in 
the New Testament Scriptures. So long as the spirit 
or psyche is there the * soma ' lives ; when the spirit 
departs, and no preservative influence takes its place, 
the ' body ' soon comes to nothing and is forgotten. 

The bread eaten at the Lord's Supper does not live,, 
neither has it any conscious purpose. To worship it 
is to worship as very a fetish as the mumbo-jumbo of 
the benighted African ; and the lesson, which the re- 
ception of such a doctrine by so many millions of rational 
human beings teaches, is this : that in spite of man's 
blindness, and selfishness, and sinfulness, he still clings 
to a faith in God, that cannot be obliterated from the 
human heart. 

If he is not conscious of the God and Father of our 
Lord Jesus Christ revealing Himself to him, inclining 
his will to good, and inspiring a horror of sin, he may 
sink into the lowest depths of intellectual debasement, 
and even find there a God suited to his conscious 
wants. And the Father, in His infinite mercy, accepts 
this faith in the fetish, when it holds in its core the 
Divine principle of human brotherhood, as the highest 
and most spiritual offering His worshipper is at present 
able to give Him. And it is possible that even such a 
faith may be found in connection with aspirations after 
good, more profound and constant than those of the 
Pharisee of intellectual pride, who thanks God he is 
not so benighted as this poor creature he looks down 
upon. 

It teaches, too, the depth of impressibility of the 
infant mind by religious doctrine. If the infant mind 
were not designedly taken possession of, and faith in 
this bread fetish stamped upon its tender conscience 
as the truth of God, such a monstrous doctrine would 
never have been accepted as the faith of millions. 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 91 

There is another important lesson, too, which this 
wide-spread doctrine teaches. It shows that the 
destinies of the human race are in its own hands. If 
a priesthood working against God can yet mould the 
intellectual character of so many millions, what could 
not be effected by a society of men working with God 
to regenerate the race and work out his Divine pur- 
poses of love and mercy to the whole human family ! 

Superstition is not so much the enemy of God as 
intellectual pride and exclusiveness. Superstition may 
be associated with much brotherly feeling and desire 
of service ; but pride, from whatever cause, which 
builds up a wall of separation between its possessor 
and those whom it despises, shuts itself out, and every- 
thing belonging to it, from the kingdom of heaven, 
and from the light of God's countenance ; and is mur- 
derously hostile to the work of the Saviour and the 
evolution of the Divine image in the soul of man. 

The perfect man is the true symbol of God. To 
such an one we owe all reverence and all obedience. 
And so, as it were, instinctively the Christian world 
has ever looked upon the Lord Jesus Christ. But 
though the perfect man is the true symbol of God, all 
men possess that image or its seed germ in themselves. 
And by virtue of this Divine possession every son of 
man is entitled to the brotherly regard of his brethren, 
to reverence as a brother man created in the image of 
God, and so far as his brother can see in him that image 
union with him. 

If religion has any meaning and any use in the 
world, it surely must be to evolve this Divine image 
fully in all who accept it and make use of it as a rule 
of life. The special work of religion is to lift up. 
The religious man must be the burden-bearer, must 
reverence the sinner for the possibilities that lie in him, 
as well as the saint for what he has achieved. With- 
out the grace of God we should all be workers of evil. 



92 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

APPENDIX C, page 65. 

1 ENOCHOS.' — ' He who shall eat the bread or drink 
the cup of the Lord unworthily will be held in the 
unity of the body and blood of the Lord for 
judgment. 

The orthodox translation of this passage of the 
Epistle, ' shall be guilty of the body and blood of the 
Lord,' presents the most astonishing instance and 
illustration of traditional interpretation overriding all 
regard to the meaning of the words, and at the same 
time all regard to common-sense, that the history of 
Christian literature offers to our notice. 

' Guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.' This 
collocation of words has no meaning, and never had a 
meaning in the English language. Try it by compari- 
son : ' Guilty of the body and blood of the Queen of 
England.' 

A man can only be guilty of crime, of some trans- 
gression of law. Had the expression been * guilty of 
profaning,' it would be rational enough. But there is 
not a word about profanation in the whole passage. 
And clearly we have no right to add words to what 
the Apostle wrote to make sense, until we have ex- 
hausted all rational methods cf interpretation of what 
he does say. 

Let us examine the subject carefully. 

The word i'voxos — ' enochos,' here translated 
' guilty,' occurs ten times in the New Testament ; four 
times in Matt. v. 21, 22, translated in the Revised 
Version, ' in danger of ; ' once in Matt. xxvi. 66 ; 
once in Mark xiv. 64, and once in Hebrews ii. 15, 
translated ' subject to ;' and once in Mark iii. 29 ; and 
again in James ii. 10, and in the passage before us 
translated 'guilty of.' It is thus evident that we have 
no word or single phrase in the English language 
that is the equivalent of ' enochos ' in the Greek. 

To get an adequate idea of its meaning, we must, 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 93 

therefore, look to its derivation. It comes from 
€vex(&, ' to hold or keep fast within/ ' to be in the 
power of/ and so ' to be subject to, or liable to/ 4 to 
be held in control under/ e.g., as a slave to the will 
of his master, or as a criminal under sentence of law ; 
and its applicative meaning depends on the nature or 
quality or purpose of the holding, or restraining power. 
But its usual meaning seems to be ' to be held in/ for 
the purpose of punishment or corrective discipline, and 
perhaps the nearest English phrase to express such 
meaning is 'to be held in the grip of some stronger 
power for control or judgment. 

Any one who will take the trouble to examine the 
passages referred to will see that this idea is common 
to the whole of them. 

In Matthew v. 21, 22, the man who gives way to 
anger is 'in the grip of — i.e., cannot escape from the 
judgment of — ' the Gehenna of fire/ In Matthew 
xxvi. 66 and Mark xiv. 64, when the crowd call for 
the crucifixion of Jesus, and by popular vote, as it were, 
adjudge Him to death, guilt, as of law transgressed, is 
not in their minds. The popular dislike of Jesus 
called for the gratification of vengeful feelings, and 
when the dislike was seer to be general the demand 
was made, and the popular sentence was given, ' Let 
Him die the death ' — ' Let Him be " held in the grip " 
of death.' 

In Hebrews ii. 15, it is said that Jesus Himself 

' partook of flesh and blood, that through death He 

might deliver them who through fear of death were all 

their lifetime subject to bondage / i.e., held in the grip 

of the fear of death, which is the bondage spoken of. 

In James ii. 10, the translation of ' enochos ' by 
1 guilty ' gives a sense so false and ludicrous that it is 
hard to conceive how so many able men, as the Re- 
vision was committed to, could have been blind to it.' 
The translators, by translating ' enochos ' in this pas- 
sage ' guilty,' make St. James to say, in effect, that 



94 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

1 Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble 
in one command, becomes guilty of all,' a statement 
which unmistakably conveys the idea that he who 
steals a penny is guilty of murder, adultery, and break- 
ing the Sabbath. Surely no sane man could have 
fancied such an idea as they describe St. James to have 
seriously written. The meaning of St. James's own 
words is clear, simple, and rational. His position is 
that the law of God is one law, the expression of one 
Divine will ; and so that whosoever transgresses the 
least of God's commands brings himself ' within the 
grip ' of that unitary and universal principle of truth 
and righteousness which is the Divine rule of judg- 
ment. This idea is open to no just criticism. But 
then such expression of it affords no justification for 
translating ' enochos ' by ' guilty ' in I Cor. xi. 27. 

In Mark iii. 29 the preceding observations do not 
apply with equal force ; but still, even here, though 
the word ' guilty ' does not stand self condemned, as 
in James ii. 10, it does not adequately represent the 
original idea. The Revised Version reads thus : 
' Whoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit 
hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin ' 
— a sin that never dies. 

The forgiveness of sin is always represented in the 
New Testament as resulting from faith in Christ ; and 
this faith opens the believer to a new and Divine life 
— the inflowing of the Holy Spirit, the earnest of 
the Christian's redemption — as the Divine witness of 
the truth of the promises of the Gospel, and of the 
believer's interest in them. This gift of the Holy 
Spirit comes to Him as a member of the body of 
Christ, and is ' Christ in him the hope of glory,' 
creating him anew, by a Divine operation, in the image 
of God, delivering him from the power of sin, and 
imparting the Divine strength needful for growth in 
righteousness, in the true Christian life. 

The wilful rejection, therefore, of this Divine influ- 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 95 

^ence, which is absolutely needful for his personal re- 
generation, and which rejection is involved in ' blas- 
pheming against the Holy Spirit/ shuts the man guilty 
of it out of the pale of Christ's salvation, and so leaves 
him hopelessly in ' the grip ' of sin — of the evil principle 
in him, which alienates him from everything that is holy, 
^is long as the age endures. Theft, murder, adultery — 
indeed, all other forms of sin — of necessity cease when 
the sinner is brought under the regenerating influence of 
the Holy Spirit ; but he who rejects this influence, by 
the very rejection shuts himself out from the possi- 
bility of pardon and peace with God, because he wil- 
fully continues in a state of personal hostility to the 
only Divine and regenerating principle by which he 
can be saved. 

The word ' enochos ' here, as everywhere else in the 
New Testament, means ' forcibly held fast in the grip 
of ' something or other, evil or of a Divine power, 
for ultimate judgment. 

He who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit is ' held 
fast in the grip of an evil principle that is eternally 
opposed to, and that eternally rejects the salvation 
of Christ, and so becomes the subject of the Divine 
judgment. 

It is thus clear that all logical applications of the 
word ' enochos ' are derived from this central idea of 
' subjection to ' or of ' control by' a dominant power, 
bringing judgment in its train, and the whole scope of 
the passage in St. Paul (1 Cor. xi. 26 to the end of the 
chapter) is in harmony with this general idea — that the 
unworthy communicant having become a member of 
the Church — the body of Christ — is held in spite, of 
his unworthiness in the spiritual power embodied in 
the Church, for corrective judgment, and so for ultimate 
salvation ; and that partaking of the Lord's Supper, 
so far as it is the bond of outward Christian union in 
the Church, unites the disciple to his Lord, as a mem- 
ber is united to the body ; and that though he maybe 



9 6 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

unconscious of his union to his Saviour, or conscious 
without seeking to realize it as he ought ; and though 
the act of unworthily — that is, of ignorantly and with- 
out intelligent purpose — partaking of the Supper and 
the Cup, leads to many evil consequences ; yet it 
cannot separate from the love of Christ, who merci- 
fully chastens Hjs disciples for their offences, but will 
not finally condemn them with the unbelieving world. 
A perusal of the verses following (30-32) shows 
beyond doubt that this is the meaning of the Apostle. 
And a further reference to 1 Cor. v. 3-6 will perhaps 
throw some additional light on the judgment spoken 
of. 



New Light from the 

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PARSIFAL 

THE FINDING OF CHRIST THROUGH ART. 

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By ALBERT ROSS PARSONS. 



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